Neel Sethi as Mowgli with Baloo, voiced by Bill Murray. Courtesy Disney
Neel Sethi as Mowgli with Baloo, voiced by Bill Murray. Courtesy Disney

Film review: The Jungle Book is an incredible visual treat

The Disney film boasts stunning, photorealistic CGI combined with live action.

James Mottram

April 13, 2016

The Jungle Book

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Neel Sethi, Idris Elba, Ben Kingsley, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray

Four stars

The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling's collection of short stories, has inspired several films, most famously Disney's much-loved 1967 animated sing-a-long.

Iron Man director Jon Favreau's new version for Disney, a compelling blend of live action and computer wizardry, tips its hat to the cartoon as it vividly brings to life Kipling's story of the man-cub Mowgli.

Played by newcomer Neel Sethi, Mowgli is an agile young boy raised in the jungle by wolves and guided by wise panther Bagheera (voiced by Ben ­Kingsley).

However, he is also in the crosshairs of snarling, scar-faced tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba), whose disfigurement is intertwined with Mowgli’s arrival in the jungle years earlier.

Scripted by Justin Marks, the story clips along as Mowgli is spirited away to the edge of the jungle by Bagheera to keep him safe from Shere Khan’s claws.

Left on his own, Mowgli must decide whether to return to the world of humans in a nearby village – but then he meets Baloo (Bill Murray), the sloth bear with a taste for honey.

Murray brings a huge amount of warmth and humour to the film, notably in the scenes in which he convinces Mowgli to climb a rock face and steal the bees’ delicious golden nectar. Their adventures get even stranger when Mowgli encounters Louie (Christopher Walken), the orang-utan “King of the Swingers” from the cartoon, reborn here as the hulking (and extinct) primate, the ­Gigantopithecus.

In what might be the film's only major misstep, aside from Mowgli's grating American accent, several of the songs from the Disney cartoon are "reinterpreted". So you get Murray speak-singing Baloo's joyful anthem The Bare Necessities, Scarlett Johansson's python Kaa hissing the hypnotic Trust In Me, and Walken's King Louie riffing on I Wan'na Be Like You.

Although performed well enough, these new versions just can't compete with the jazzy numbers from the cartoon (Terry Gilkyson's The Bare Necessities was, after all, nominated for an Oscar).

However, while it certainly feels as though Favreau would have better served his movie by leaving them alone, fortunately they don’t intrude enough to spoil overall enjoyment.

Boasting stunning photorealistic CGI – far outstripping Ang Lee's Life of Pi, with its solitary tiger – the 3-D visual effects are nothing short of incredible. Right down to the droplets of water nestling in the animals' fur, every detail is perfect.

Just remember to protect your own young – at times, Favreau’s jungle can be a dark and scary place.

artslife@thenational.ae

Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?

The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.

Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.

New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.

“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.

The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.

The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.

Bloomberg

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