The Jungle Book (1994)

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

This is a pretty exciting live-adaptation of Disney's The Jungle Book, where the story seems to follow more closely with the novel. Jason Scott Lee plays an adult Mowgli, doing a pretty darn good job in the role depicting acts of drama, wit, and heroism. The animal characters were a treat to watch as well, especially that of the huge, spellbinding snake Kaa. The villains were suspenseful characters to watch; see how Mowgli tries to defend the jungle from them. Good stuff here. Grade B+

This is an interesting movie but I was rather misled when I came to hire it. I assumed that the original Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling had a lot of Christian anecdotes in it, though I have never read it. Upon seeing this movie I thought that it would be based closed to the book and with the suggestion of a couple of others, decided to show this film to a group of kids at an Easter Mission at Normanville. They said the movie was okay but as I watched it I was regretting that I actually chose this movie. I thought that it would have Christian anecdotes but it did not. I had a gut feeling that it did not follow the book and after reading Ebert's review I discovered that I was right. Basically, I should have shown three Vegetale videos instead.This movie seems to follow more of an Indiana Jones style movie than anything else. It contains lost treasure filled cities brimming with traps and an evil imperial empire seeking to find it and steal it for themselves. The place is the far reaches of India during the time of the British occupation and they are seeking to tame the wild land with their civilisation. This is the one theme of the movie that stands out and it is the taming of the wild. The jungle is wild and the British seek to tame it. The only problem is is that they cannot. The Black Jungle is the place which nobody enters because it is untameable.The story focuses on a boy named Mogli who is lost as a child during a tiger attack on a camp. He grows up in the jungle with a wolf, a bear, and a panther. These animals are his close friends but they seem to fall into the background when Mogli returns to civilisation. This is when the British decide to attempt to civilise him. At first they don't want to, they would rather beat him up until he shows them to the treasure, but later, when it is discovered that he was the child of somebody who saved the major's life, he is then released and they attempt to civilise him.I think it is bad to deceive an audience by the title of a movie, and I don't know how the ratings people hand out ratings, but I thought that this was not really a children's movie with the amount of blood, people sinking into quicksand and being buried alive in temple traps.

Having missed this when first released, it was a pleasure to discover that this version of Kipling's THE JUNGLE BOOK has been photographed with stunning results in WideScreen color. It features an excellent cast headed by Jason Scott Lee, Lena Headey, Sam Neill and John Cleese, all giving admirable performances.Detailed scenic wonders of the jungle with dense foliage, rippling waterfalls, exotic plants and animals--and best of all, the majestic looking sets for the hidden city holding all the treasures, are what make the film worth watching. The famous story has its share of jungle thrills and these have been broadened to include even more conflict in the jealousy that evolves between Mowgli and a British officer who wants to marry the girl. His only interest in Mowgli is to have him lead him to the hidden city. As the boy who finds out that Civilization can be more dangerous than any jungle, Jason Scott Lee is the perfect embodiment of Mowgli, capturing the character's innocence and naive nature in a way that is always credible. Lena Headey makes a lovely heroine as the girl he knew as a youngster who befriends him again, against the opposition of her arrogant British officer fiancé Cary Elwes whose untimely end makes for one of the story's most exciting and satisfying scenes.Background music by Basil Pouledoris is highly effective and Stephen Sommers directs the whole piece in workmanlike fashion with only a few scenes a bit too intense for young children.Summing up: An adventurous tale well told in a gorgeously mounted production.

Youngster in India is separated from his family during a battle in his village, soon taking refuge with the animals in the wild. A rather shameless return to proved territory by the Disney company, giving Rudyard Kipling's characters another go around. It's a handsomely-produced yet simple-minded and dull adventure, complete with ludicrous attempts at modern humor and a miscast Jason Scott Lee as the grown-up Mowgli (very grown as it turns out; Lee--his physique pumped to Rambo-like proportions--looks ready to play Tarzan, not this child of the jungle!). The 1942 version of Kipling's story (starring Sabu) wasn't exactly a barn-burner, but it captured the mysteries of nature and its creatures more perceptively than this version. Only assets are the animals (beautiful to look at), the elaborate art direction, and Basil Poledouris' sweeping background score. *1/2 from ****