Film review: The Jungle Book is an incredible visual treat

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

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

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.