Feature the voices of: Haley Joel Osment, John Goodman, Mae Whitman, John Rhys-Davies, Tony Jay, Phil Collins
Director: Steve Tenbirth
Producer: Mary Thorne
Screenplay: Karl Geurs
Music: Joel McNeely
U.S. Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
After seeing a less-than-stellar motion picture, I often experience feelings of disappointment, irritation, sadness and anger. But it's rare for me to feel insulted – which is precisely what happened with The Jungle Book 2. This lame animated fable, despite having "direct-to-video" written all over it, was released by Disney, in an act of unparalleled greed and desperation, into multiplexes. Children under the age of 10 will watch just about anything that's animated, so this is an obvious example of a distributor taking advantage of its primary consumers.
The Jungle Book 2 is a sequel to 1967's The Jungle Book, which was based on the novel by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling is undoubtedly spinning in his grave right now. This new tale postulates that Mowgli (voice of Haley Hoel Osment), our irrepressible wild boy-hero, is growing bored by life in a village. So, pursued by his best friend/step-sister, Shanti (Mae Whitman), he enters the forest, where he meets up with old friends like Baloo the Bear (John Goodman) and Bagheera the Panther. Together, they once again defeat Shere Khan the Tiger (Tony Jay) in between opportunities to sing "The Bare Necessities" (which gets three renditions). That's it – the whole story. You can look under your theater seats, but you won't find anything else, except maybe some hardened, chewed gum.
As a direct-to-video release, this is fine for young children. But as a theatrical offering, it represents a further degradation of the Disney trademark. It's all a matter of dollars, which have been in short supply for Disney (recall that their big fall animated feature, Treasure Planet, was a flop of major proportions). Family films are scarce at the moment, so Disney saw the opportunity to make some money. Never mind that the film's animation is substandard (just a cut, and a small one at that, above Saturday morning cartoons), the music is as banal as the screenplay, and the running length is a skinny 73 minutes (actually 68 minutes, sans end credits). Of course, considering how thin the premise is, it's a wonder the filmmakers were able to stretch it past the hour mark. The director, Steve Tenbirth, is making his debut after working as an animation supervisor on several direct-to-video efforts, and the relatively small number of animators is an indication of how cut-rate the budget is. In fact, the scale of the production is on par with that of the countless animated sequels Disney has been spitting out into video stores over the past six or seven years (everything from The Lion King 2 to Cinderella II). The movie looks cheap because it is cheap.
The younger the child, the more likely it is that he or she will derive some enjoyment from this movie. Adults will be bored to tears. There's nothing in this movie for anyone whose age and I.Q. are both in the double-digit range. The Jungle Book 2 is an indicator of how far Disney has fallen, although I can't recall the Magic Kingdom ever releasing a worse animated feature into multiplexes. My recommendation is that, even if you have young children, wait for this film to come out on video, which is where it should have been headed in the first place.
© 2003 James Berardinelli