I decided to make Jon Favreau’s adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book my 5-year-old daughter’s first live-action movie theater viewing experience, in part because I really wanted to see it. As a fan of Favreau’s films – especially the first Iron Man and Chef – I was highly curious about how he’d tackle reinventing one of Disney’s 2-D animated classics.
I had confidence in Favreau’s wry, cheeky humor and expected that to be on display here. And having seen how well Favreau directed and interacted with child actor Emjay Anthony, who played his preteen son in Chef, I was expecting a nuanced, compelling performance from Neel Sethi, who stars in the The Jungle Book as Mowgli, a boy who has grown up in a jungle, literally raised by wolves (and a wise panther).
But I knew as soon as the trailers ended at our screening, and Favreau himself popped up with a sleepy-eyed, unsmiling, overly earnest explanation of why he chose to adapt Kipling’s classic, that there was reason to worry: This film was going to take itself too seriously, wasn’t it? And as a result, my 5-year-old wasn’t going to be able to invest in this for 90 minutes, was she?
The Jungle Book opens promisingly enough, with a fast-paced action sequence. Mowgli is running with wolves. We learn that it’s a race and if he wins it, he’ll become an official inductee into the pack of wolves that have come of age. When he doesn’t win, after attempting a move wolves aren’t capable of making, the film launches into what will become a frequent refrain: Mowgli is scolded for “using tricks” – human abilities – to get ahead.
As much as this version of The Jungle Book is about coming of age and being accepted and celebrated for who you are, it’s also a film about adults lecturing and pressuring a talented, precocious kid and tamping down his burgeoning talents. That the adults are animals is inconsequential. Making The Jungle Book a darkly lit live-action film with voice work from serious dramatic actors such as Giancarlo Esposito, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba and Lupita Nyong’o sort of wrests the film of the joy in which its animated predecessor reveled.
The Jungle Book is a story about a human boy orphaned after a tiger kills his father and about a tiger seeking to kill the orphaned boy. It has always run the risk of being too serious for small children. But somehow the 1967 animated version made the stakes seem fun and fanciful, as though Mowgli were simply on an adventure, not trying to outrun a fatal mauling.
In Favreau’s version, Mowgli seems constantly either in danger of being killed or manipulated by some cunning, self-interested animal. Elba’s turn as the vengeful tiger Shere Khan is particularly mirthless, and it underscored something I hadn’t considered about villains in children’s films: They should have a sense of humor – just enough playfulness to distract from the real threat they pose to the hero. Shere Khan is coolly murderous and chillingly one-note about it.
Nyong’o as Raksha, Mowgli’s surrogate mother, and Kingsley, as Bagheera the panther who serves as Mowgli’s mentor, are similarly solemn throughout. The one bright spot is Bill Murray’s Baloo, whose comic relief mostly lands and whose advocacy for Mowgli using his human ingenuity in the jungle is refreshing, given how pessimistic everyone else is about it. But with Murray providing the film’s only playful moments, it felt strangely adult and certainly a poor choice as my daughter’s introduction to live-action film.
Admittedly, this may simply be a film for older kids. (Even though Neel Sethi looks much younger in the film, he was 11 when it was shot.) But even adjusting for age and maturity, Favreau’s jungle seems like a pretty intense and perilous, if breathtakingly beautiful, place for a boy to grow up, which in turn makes it difficult to invest in his desire to stay there.