Mowgli: Leg­end of the Jungle

On the sur­face of it, you have to feel sor­ry for Andy Serkis. It can’t be easy keep­ing your head when all about you are los­ing theirs and blam­ing it on you. To trust your­self when all stu­dio execs doubt you. To wait and wait and not be tired by wait­ing. And, in the end, to watch the things you’ve giv­en your life to be bro­ken, hav­ing built them up with cut­ting-edge tools.

This is the harsh real­i­ty of life as a Hol­ly­wood direc­tor, as Serkis knows all-too well now that his years-in-the-mak­ing pas­sion project has been uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped sold to Net­flix. Orig­i­nal­ly slat­ed for a late 2016 release, Serkis’ The Jun­gle Book, oth­er­wise known by the bland­ly gener­ic title Mowgli: Leg­end of the Jun­gle, was delayed due to pro­duc­tion issues which are too myr­i­ad and mun­dane to go into here, but report­ed­ly include a bloat­ed script and esca­lat­ing budget.

Warn­er Bros were appar­ent­ly also wor­ried about the film’s prox­im­i­ty to Disney’s rival live-action ani­ma­tion and, watch­ing it, you can under­stand their trep­i­da­tion. Because Serkis’ ver­sion seems like a slap­dash fol­ly next to Jon Favreau’s spec­tac­u­lar adap­ta­tion of Rud­yard Kipling’s cher­ished col­lect­ed sto­ries, which proved a huge hit with both audi­ences and crit­ics two years ago. There’s bare­ly a nar­ra­tive detail, tech­ni­cal trick or cast­ing choice that doesn’t seem in some way deriv­a­tive of (and infe­ri­or to) Favreau’s film – to give a quick exam­ple, where Scar­lett Johans­son brought a cer­tain ser­pen­tine sul­tri­ness to Kaa, Cate Blanchett’s take on the char­ac­ter sounds like Gal­adriel with a throat infection.

When he signed on to make this his direc­to­r­i­al debut (it has since been super­seded by Breathe, a hand­some roman­tic dra­ma you would nev­er guess was by the same film­mak­er), Serkis promised to put a dark­er spin on the source mate­r­i­al. Not tak­ing the easy or obvi­ous route when rein­ter­pret­ing a clas­sic text should always be com­mend­ed, but the upshot of Serkis’ com­par­a­tive­ly seri­ous vision is a drea­ry, joy­less trudge through famil­iar nar­ra­tive terrain.

The first hour is a mad-dash recap of the sto­ry we know, with Mowgli (Rohan Chand) being taught the ways of the jun­gle by Bagheera (Chris­t­ian Bale), Baloo (Serkis him­self) and his adop­tive wolf pack, before even­tu­al­ly fac­ing off against the fear­some Shere Khan (Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch). Strange­ly, the con­cept of jun­gle law is intro­duced not as an ancient set of spir­i­tu­al guide­lines but a bind­ing con­sti­tu­tion to be enforced and obeyed at all times by every liv­ing crea­ture. It’s all rather heavy going and, con­se­quent­ly, not much fun.

For the final 45 min­utes, Serkis and first-time screen­writer Cal­lie Kloves take things in an unex­pect­ed direc­tion, as Mowgli leaves the jun­gle behind and soon finds him­self being edu­cat­ed in the ways of man by a come­ly vil­lage woman (Frei­da Pin­to) and a booze-addled hunter (Matthew Rhys). From here the film builds towards a dra­mat­ic finale where our young hero’s two worlds col­lide in pre­dictably vio­lent fashion.

The two most strik­ing images in the film involve Mowgli’s skin being stained red: first as an infant fol­low­ing a fate­ful run-in with Shere Khan; sec­ond dur­ing Holi, India’s annu­al ​‘fes­ti­val of colour’, when the epony­mous man-cub’s eyes are opened for the first time to the won­ders of human­i­ty. Yet moments of visu­al inspi­ra­tion and sym­bol­ic clar­i­ty are fleet­ing in this aes­thet­i­cal­ly and tonal­ly uneven com­ing-of-age adventure.

Through­out the film Serkis makes some aston­ish­ing­ly ill-judged cre­ative deci­sions, not least of which is the use of per­for­mance-cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy. When com­bined with high-grade dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion – as in Peter Jackson’s King Kong and Lord of the Rings series, as well as the recent Plan­et of the Apes pre­quels, the suc­cess of which Serkis was instru­men­tal in – the effect can be breath­tak­ing and immer­sive. In this case, how­ev­er, match­ing the actors’ facial expres­sions and fea­tures to their ani­mal avatars pro­duces dis­tract­ing­ly uncan­ny results.

Then there’s the director’s own dubi­ous voiceover work, which turns The Jun­gle Book’s most beloved char­ac­ter into a decid­ed­ly un-cud­dly, men­ac­ing pres­ence. Last time we checked, snakes don’t have full lips, and it’s prob­a­bly safe to assume that Kipling didn’t envi­sion Baloo as a surly cockney.