Ignore the cynics - this is classic Disney

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2001)

The last time I watched The Jungle Book, I thought for about half a second that King Louie was a rather uncomfortable stereotype. Given that white racists love the phrase `Get back to the jungle' and make comparisons to monkeys, a scatting orang-utan who desperately wants to be like a man seemed like either a dated character who'd never heard of political correctness, or a deliberately racist one who sat rather awkwardly among the otherwise saccharine sentiments. But after reversing my lobotomy, I realised just how much I was talking out of my a**e, because Mowgli, who this awful, shameful black stereotype sings to, isn't white. There's that theory shot to pieces. Add to that the fact that Baloo the bear scats alongside Louie, and that bears haven't been given the racist association that monkeys have been saddled with, and it becomes pretty obvious that people are reading into Louie a perversion that simply isn't there. After all, if Louie is a racist character, then every British viewer should be disgusted to find that the villainous, murderous, savage Sher Khan is given an English accent despite living in a jungle in the middle of India. My point being: shut up.
The same point goes for people who've complained that the female character who attracts Mowgli is desperately sexist because her song shows that her only ambitions are to be a wife to a handsome man and a cook to her children. That argument ignores not only that this was a movie made in the 1960s, where a career girl was still far from the norm, but that it wasn't set in the present day anyway! If Mowgli had spotted a girl on her way to the office where she'd compete with the best male executives on an equal salary, the movie would have entered a fantasy land less realistic than the one in which a bear can sing.
In truth, The Jungle Book boasts the kind of charm and innocence and magic that we used to associate with Disney ourselves, before the company began telling us about its charm and innocence and magic in every advert for every video it rams down our throats. It's this genuine Disneyism that makes The Jungle Book a classic despite its wafer-thin plot. Mowgli, a man-cub raised in the jungle by a family of wolves, is to be returned to the man-village to keep him safe from Sher Khan, a tiger whose fear of man's gun and fire, and whose links with the notorious Combat 18, make him a dangerous addition to the local population. From there, the movie spends the remainder of its running time wandering around the jungle rather aimlessly, and its episodic structure means the movie sags at times while soaring at others.
Every scene with Baloo is a winner, and the King Louie episode is perhaps the most entertaining, but these are dragged down slightly by two rather repetitive scenes with Kaa the Snake, whose career hit its nadir with his infamous appearance with Britney Spears at the MTV Awards. Your enjoyment of the two scenes with the Dawn Patrol depends entirely on how funny you find a forgetful elephant, and on how well you can forgive Colonel Hathi's crypto-fascist, militaristic obsession. The lowest point is the sequence with the Beatles-lookalike vultures, managing to include the poorest characterisations, the least memorable song, and the most half-assed of ideas. The vultures are clearly a nod to the Fab Four, but only one speaks with a Liverpudlian accent, and when they break into song, it's in the style of a barbershop quartet and not a rock and roll group. The homage is therefore compromised and becomes pointless.
But The Jungle Book is more than the sum of its parts. Its highlights may be unevenly distributed, but nothing can argue with the fact that I didn't stop smiling through the whole thing. Baloo is the absolute star of the film, one of the great Disney characters that ranks alongside Pinocchio's Jiminy Cricket and Mulan's Mushu, and it's his presence that accounts for most of the film's immense charm. He has the best song, the best lines, and the best scenes, and his loveable slobbiness can't be praised highly enough. Even his entrance, where he strolls onto screen singing `Well it's a doo-be-de-doo, yes it's a doo-be-de-doo' is inexplicably hilarious! I know it's not the greatest line of dialogue in the history of cinema, but it makes me laugh every time I hear it.
This is simply classic Disney. Great characters, great songs, stunning animation, and a heart to shame most of the vacuous 90s output this generation has had to suffer.