|
|
MOWGLI
Director: Andy Serkis Cast: Rohan Chand, Matthew Rhys, Freida Pinto, the voices and/or performances of Christian Bale, Benedict Cumberbatch, Naomie Harris, Andy Serkis, Peter Mullan, Cate Blanchett, Jack Reynor, Eddie Marsan, Tom Hollander MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:44 Release Date: 11/29/18 (limited); 12/7/18 (wider; Netflix) |
|
Review by Mark Dujsik | December 6, 2018 When filmmakers return to Rudyard Kipling, they seem to inevitably arrive at his 1894 collection of short stories, and when they get to The Jungle Book, they focus exclusively on the tales of Mowgli, the orphaned boy who became part of the animal kingdom while remaining separate from it. For his second outing as a director, Andy Serkis returns to the mostly dried-up well of Kipling's Mowgli-focused stories. Watching Mowgli, one realizes that there simply isn't much more to do with this particular story. That's not entirely the fault of Serkis or screenwriter Callie Kloves, who have the bad timing of their movie being released a mere two years after a fine adaptation of Kipling's stories, as well as the feature-length animated film from 1967. The timing is all the worse, because the major selling point of this version is that it features computer-generated animals accompanying a human boy on his adventures. Serikis was beaten to the punch by the earlier adaptation, and even if we're just considering this version in terms of its tone, that same predecessor already did the whole darker, more mature act. It's unfair, of course, to judge a new version of an established story by the movie adaptations that have come before it, but such are the perils of the movies and for those who watch enough movies to know that they've already seen something done before and better. When it comes to material like Kipling's stories, it's even more difficult to separate a new adaptation from its forebears. Such material has been part of the cultural consciousness for as long as people now living have been alive. Let's, though, try to forget everything that has come before this version, except for its foundation, of course. Let's imagine that this is the first time we've seen this story adapted for the screen. Let's imagine that those catchy songs from the animated film don't exist and try to forget that the last live-action version of the story was such an impressive technical feat. Let's look at Serkis and Kloves' adaptation for what it is. The unfortunate thing is that it comes up short, even when ignoring the versions that have come before this one. It is dark, yes, and quite violent, but in taking that approach to such an extreme, the movie loses the sense of fun and adventure. It has mostly ignored the world that Kipling created—filled with songs, poems, and rules that made the jungle seem like an ecosystem of different societies, not just animals with biological drives. Whatever one may think of Kipling and what his stories had to say about people, those stories existed as fables, meant for us to take what we will from them. Here, the filmmakers mostly want us to take away that they can create real-enough-looking animals that can talk, fight, and bleed. As for the human boy's story, it's an underdeveloped examination of whether nature or nurture makes us into the people we become. The story, for those who somehow have missed literature that's almost 125 years old, follows Mowgli (Rohan Chand), a boy who was orphaned when his parents were killed by the fierce tiger Shere Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch, who, like the other actors playing animals, provides the voice and a motion-capture performance). After being rescued by the panther Bagheera (Christian Bale), the child is brought into a pack by wolves Nisha (Naomie Harris) and Vihaan (Eddie Marsan). As the boy grows up, he's trained in the ways of the jungle by his panther "brother" and the gruff bear Baloo (Serkis). Shere Khan wants to finish what he started years ago and, in the process, take over the role of leader of the jungle, currently held by Akela (Peter Mullan), the head of the wolf pack. The first—and, perhaps, last—element of note and in terms of importance is the realization of these talking animals. If they don't work, it's almost a guarantee that the movie itself won't, either. The visual-effects team has pretty much split the difference between realism and anthropomorphism, creating a bunch of strange creatures that look akin to photo-realistic cartoons. The features are exaggerated enough that the animals are expressive in ways that range from subtle to absurd. The wolves, for example, look fine and credibly emote, as does the panther, while Shere Khan has an overstated, constant snarl of evil and Baloo's jaw is broken in such way that makes him look quite grotesque. There's a level of inconsistency between these characters that means there's never a unified vision for the animal kingdom. More to the point, the animals always stick out from their surroundings. We can see the seams, to put it bluntly, and the combination of exaggeration, a division in design, and the simple fact that the animals never look convincing means that we're kept at a distance from the story. There is more to it than that, especially if we're less generous in giving each version of a story its due. Even being generous, though, Mowgli mistakes action for meaning and visual effects as the primary reason to tell a story. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
Buy Related Products Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)
|
(for intense sequences of action violence including bloody images, and
some thematic elements)
