A review on my rating system; each star has a unique category to fill. Story and writing is the first star, directing the second, casting and acting the third, editing the fourth and pure enjoyability the fifth and final star available. Keep in mind these can be half stars in each category.
So lets get the ball rolling with story and writing. While this is based upon a book and this has been put into film version quite a few times in the past, there is room for new interpretation with each iteration. This time around being real action had limitations and advantages I feel. Overall the story line was fairly true to the original animated film, but there were a lot of small differences along the way. Most of the characters Mowgli visits in previous versions were included in this film. There were a few things I didn't like fully but story gets a star.
Directing this time is Jon Favreau, whom most of you should know him from Marvel's Iron Man and Avengers series. Fun fact, he is also lined up for a real action Lion King, and a sequel to this film. I think Jon's experience thus far really played in good with the Jungle Book, but I was surprised to see him as the director. Pleasantly surprised. Jon did a great job and thus we have another full star.
Casting and Acting; this is one of those times I look to see if I could imagine any other person playing a certain role. If the answer is 'no' then we get a full star almost by default. In this case while a majority of the casting was done very well I did have a few I was not in love with. Bill Murray as Baloo was damn near perfect, but how can you watch the Jungle Book and not think of John Goodman? I was not able to say Christopher Walken as King Louie was the only choice. Did he do well? Yes, he did just fine. Scarlett Johansson as Kaa was a real surprise. Kaa was only in one scene, despite more than that being filmed. Perhaps if she would have been in more scenes we would have been able to get more used to a female Kaa, but this stray from the original was too much for me to accept without mentioning.
Continuing with casting and acting I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to pick out the names of most of the actors quite quickly. I will leave the last few names out to see if you can pick them up as well. I was also extremely happy with the real acting mixing with the CGI placement. I did not notice any glaring errors. Casting and acting gets half a star.
Editing and post production comes up next, and in a film like this it can easily make the entire movie unwatchable. In Jungle Book's case the film version of the animals was surreal. The only way you can really tell the animals are not real and really acting in the film is to watch the mouths. It looks odd because of course animals don't talk. That being said it was not bad at all, they did a fantastic job even with the mouths. I can not think of a movie off the top of my head that the animal CGI was this fantastic. Oh yes, there are lots of movies with great robot and alien CGI but I'm talking jungle animals here. Editing and post production gets another full star. Fun fact, the budget for this film was 175 MILLION dollars and you can see where it went. A big name cast and fantastic editing. The film recouped over 100 million on opening weekend alone.
Last but not least is enjoyability. As you can probably guess this film is pretty fun to watch. The CGI, the acting and casting, the directing and the story all come together very nicely. My quarrel with this last category is the little differences thrown in from the original. Some of them were enjoyable, but some of them really did not hit me. Also, just personal preference, I did not like Christopher Walken in this role. Enjoyability gets half a star, and this was the hardest of the 5 categories to rate.
Overall is this movie worth it? YES! I do like the trend of real motion films that is coming out lately, and this is a very good addition to that category. You defiantly should watch this film. The Jungle Book (2016) comes in at a very solid 4 star rating.
