Tarzan: Trashed by Disney

Rating: Null/10 (1 July 1999)

The origins of Tarzan stories parallels those of Charles Dickens' wonderful stories in that they first appeared in much awaited periodicals. This accounts for the continuing suspense in the original stories of Tarzan. While Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote other stories of equal quality and significance the Tarzan tales that first appeared in print in 1912 remain the most popular.
As for the "Disney version", here is yet another example of fine design and animation married to a gaunt, incommensurate and ineffective, screenplay. This is the 39th churning of the famous Ape-Man on film since the first in1918. In all that time, for those of you who have read the originals, you would see that none of the great number of films thus far has done justice to the original stories.
In this Disney airing, the film and character design is superb, the best to come from Disney in decades, especially in the Tarzan character who looks ever so much like Jonathan LaPaglia, a new, great profile and star of TV Adventure science fiction show, SEVEN DAYS. With some of the work done in Paris, it has a European look, which are usually more aesthetic and soothing than the recent Burbank efforts.
The backgrounds, like the characters, show great artistry. But it is like watching a $150,000 leather upholstered Daimler Saloon powered by a five horsepower lawn mower engine. The screenplay is papering thin, a skeleton of the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs tales of Tarzan. Instead of adventure, the audience is fed Shtick. In this version, we are not even honored by the appearance of a single African native in the entire film.
The Disney studio management, apparently not at all up to snuff on the philosophy of their founder, Walt Disney, keep creating films for children's markets where their founder, in fact, did not. The current studio works unlike Walt Disney in other ways. This seems a mystery since they owe it all to the founding creative director who understood so much about audiences (that, unlike what you will hear from marketers, does not change at all when it comes to the human story and its parameters). Walt Disney, for example, in casting Snow White, cleverly avoided two of the great singing stars of the era, Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin, the latter whose great voice actually kept an entire studio, Universal, from going belly up. Walt Disney a true creative director, albeit a whip-driving one, instead cast the completely unknown Adriana Caselotti (who died just two years before this writing).
Do you know, for example, who stars in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT? There are hundreds of successful films that in fact made the stars as opposed to the reverse. Remember ROCKY? AMERICAN GRAFFITTI? STAR WARS? ET THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL? etc., etc. The film's the thing, the story and how it is mounted. All you need beyond that is talent, not "names."
The uninspired, current Disney tycoons, apparently chain locked into their misperception of market demands, insist on casting very well known voices whose life images do battle with the animated character each time a line pours out of the speakers. One keeps hearing daytime TV talk show host, Rosie O'Donnell, for example, and sees a cartoon ape mouthing the "in your face", loudmouth Rosie. It eats right into the heart of the story mood and thrust. Thankfully, we are spared the usual mood shattering, time eating Broadway-styled musical numbers with just one small bit of helplessness in this film.
While the writing offers some fair lines, albeit 1990s idiomatic language in the Victorian era, it lacks the kind of soul, the depth and legs that can take an animated film into the ages. Phil Collins' contemporary pop songs further destroy the legs of the film. These are, again, mixed with the Victorian era characters and story, instead of an original, inspiring musical score reminiscent of the period, yielding more mood conflict.
The central interest here, it appears, in creating this particular Tarzan, was to put together an ephemeral product and associated commercial tie-ins that can look good in the year end annual report. The days of creating enduring art at Disney although that art would secure continuous future income, now seems to be lost to the once creatively successful studio.
Those who desire the original adventures of this timeless hero and wish to travel to far away places, perhaps the Dark Continent, and visit the vast imagination of Edgar Rice Burroughs, are urged to read the original tales.
Raul daSilva Author: THE WORLD OF ANIMATION, Eastman Kodak, 1979. Multiple, International award-winning animation writer-director --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Best- Raul daSilva Writer-Director-Producer STUDIO merrywood http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/merrywood merrywood@compuserve.com 1199 Whitney Avenue G7 Hamden, CT 06517-2804 phone/fax (203) 777-6957