An amazing Disney movie with just one minor flaw: it's not long enough

Rating: 10/10 (20 October 2007)

"The Jungle Book" encompasses everything that I always wanted to see in an old hand-drawn animated film by Walt Disney. I saw many of Disney's masterpieces in my childhood, and now recently, I have begun to start watching them again several years since I last saw them. Take "The Jungle Book" for instance. It was one of my favorite Disney movies in my childhood, and yet I hadn't seen it in years until just a few moments ago. And now that I'm older and know more about the movie, I appreciate it and enjoy it even more than I believe I ever did as a kid.
First off, there is the absolute amazing animation done by Disney's studio. If I'm not mistaken, they were still using hand-drawn animation when they made "The Jungle Book" and if my guess is correct, it was masterful. It's amazing that artists could be so talented, so precise, and yet so creative at the same time to make things look so vivid and realistic. And they also bring depth and characterization to their 2-Dimensional characters with only a script to base their work off. All of the characters in "The Jungle Book" are amazingly created and fitted into the story, adapted with talented actors to perform the voices. And Disney used authenticity with several voices. The voice of Mowgli was performed by an actor of about the same age as the character. The other voices of the heedful Bagheera, the take-it-easy Baloo, sinister and even more so comical Kaa, and then Shere Khan, one of the most memorable Disney villains of all. George Sanders provided a perfect, purring and cold-hearted voice for the character, ultimately increasing the effect of the tiger to make up for his lack of screen time. Lines such as "you're trying my patience" and "You should know that everyone runs from Shere Khan" always make me think in my mind: this was perfect! After Shere Khan, my favorite character is Kaa the python with the hypnotic gaze. And he's not a frightening villain, but a funny one and therefore, a lovable villain.
There is one minor flaw in "The Jungle Book" which I find in a lot other Disney movies. Everything it this film is perfect, except for the fact that its running length is just not equal to its entertainment. In other words, it's about ten or twenty minutes too short. But I suppose this is justifiable for its age. Movies at its time weren't all that long and hand-drawn movies take a long time to put together because of the hand-drawn animation. Yet, this did not impact my enjoyment on the film as I watched it. The bottom line for this review is that "The Jungle Book" is one of the finest, if not the finest, of all of Walt Disney's films. It's too bad he didn't live long enough to see this one go to theaters and see the audiences cherish and love it.