Great animation, gorgeous jungle, fine myth, and ...

Rating: 8/10 (2 September 1999)

"Hercules", "Mulan", "Tarzan". Three films in a row that are much better than they're generally supposed to be; but each is hobbled by a particularly damaging flaw. What gives me hope is that it's a DIFFERENT flaw each time. Something wounds each film and leaves it still pretty good but in no danger of being a masterpiece, and it's always a different something. You can look up my comments on the first two if you want to see what I think the problem is there. I'll get to Tarzan's weakness in due course.
I must admit I was apprehensive when I saw some of the character designs beforehand: the little gorilla Terk, the elephants, Archimedes Q. Porter (the very name makes me wince) - they all look like cutesy rejects from other Disney movies. But the proof of animation is in the motion. And the characterisation, as well as the animation, of Terk and Porter, is much more interesting than motionless drawings of them would suggest. Then there's the marvellously understated tribe of gorillas. And there's Tarzan himself: a man who thinks he's a gorilla who surfs through a world of branches and vines, and it couldn't look more natural.
New computer techniques were used to render the jungle, and as the jungle was everywhere, so were the computers. Does this make your blood run cold? Well, it ought to. Computer animation has ruined many a film, animated and live action, before this, and will ruin many a film to come. And the constant use of computers DOES generate the occasional awkwardness. But that's the worst that can be said. Actually, most of the images began life on paper, and the computers just turn them into a lush, three-dimensional world, into which Tarzan and the gorillas fit perfectly. "Deep Canvas" would have been disastrous elsewhere but it isn't here.
In starting with "Tarzan of the Apes" Disney placed itself in an enviable position - they couldn't possibly produce something worse than the book. Not that I've read the book. Edgar Rice Burroughs is almost unreadable. He is, quite possibly, the very worst writer to have made any kind of mark on the twentieth century, and that's saying a lot. He made his mark not by being able to put a sentence together, but by creating myths - or rather, by taking myths that were in the air and putting just enough flesh on them for the public to notice them. His illustrators really deserve as much credit as he does. Whatever. Disney has captured most of the beauty of the Tarzan myth and made a moving story out of it.
So what's the catch? It's the music. More precisely, it's the baleful influence of MTV, in all its aspects. Item: we open with a couple and their child aboard a scuttled ship, trying to make it to shore - and no sooner have we grasped this, than does Phil Collins intrude on our thoughts and sing about it. That it's a terrible song is the least of my complaints. The real problem is that it's beyond all doubt, as clear as the glare of the sun, that the song has no business being there. Look: if you want to have songs, be honest about it, and make the film a musical. If you don't want to make a musical then leave out the songs. It's as simple as that. In a musical, singing is an extension of talking, and songs can arise naturally out of speech. Voice-over rock songs of this kind can't. (An attempt is made to do so in one case, and it falls flat.) Nor can these rock songs arise out of, or be part of, the musical score. All they can do is get in the way. This is particularly glaring here because "Tarzan" has the ambition and the capacity to be more than a bit of "Flashdance" rubbish. It's MUCH more than a music video. So why does it sometimes act like one? -Oh, yes, that's the other problem: some of the editing and camera movement belongs on a weekend top-of-the-pops television program, distracting us from the poverty of the music; not here, disfiguring the animation.
These were my thoughts in the first few minutes. In those minutes are the worst. It gets much better, largely because the Phil Collins music video style simply can't be sustained. "Tarzan" is still very good. It's just that it would have been a lot better if it had been honestly a musical, or honestly not a musical.