The last of the animated features produced by Walt Disney, and it's a good one

Rating: 8/10 (20 January 2010)

This is one of many Disney flicks I remember from my childhood, but unlike many of them, I don't recall ever seeing the whole thing. From an early age, I was familiar with two of its songs, "The Bare Necessities" and "I Wan'na Be Like You". I first heard those on an album of songs from animated Disney movies, and then saw where they came from. I also saw the live action 1994 film of the same name on the big screen. I've watched a bunch of full-length Disney cartoons again in recent years, some produced by Walt Disney himself and some made after his death. It took me a while to get around to "The Jungle Book", but I finally rented it a few days ago, and as usual with these movies, I still found this one entertaining after all these years.
In the jungles of India, a panther named Bagheera finds a human baby boy (or "man cub") in a boat wreck, far from the nearest human village. He takes the boy to a pack of wolves for the parents to raise him with their newborn cubs. The boy's name is Mowgli, and he lives in the jungle for the next ten years. The wolves then learn that Shere Khan, a human-hating tiger, is back in the jungle, and Mowgli will have to be returned to the "man village" to be safe! Bagheera volunteers to take him back, but Mowgli is reluctant, as he wants to stay in the jungle. On the way, they encounter creatures that make the journey more challenging, and after the two of them separate due to the human boy's resistance, Mowgli meets a bear named Baloo. This laid back bear teaches him about living a care-free lifestyle, and he now wants to live with him, but Shere Khan is still a major threat, especially after he learns that there's a human in the jungle!
Like many other Disney movies, one thing that helps this film's entertainment level is the animation, most notably the backgrounds here. You obviously can't expect the computer generated backgrounds we see today, but the backgrounds here are still beautiful with the faded colours, especially the green. The story isn't the most interesting one I've ever seen, at least not early in the film, and for a while, I kind of wondered if it was enough to carry the film. Fortunately, I think it gets better along the way, and is often suspenseful, without being too scary. There are also a number of memorable characters, including the lovable Baloo (I might have been introduced to him as a little kid with "TaleSpin"), Kaa the Snake, King Louie the Ape, Shere Khan, and the vultures based on the Beatles. A lot of the characters provide comic relief. The voice acting is mostly good, with the exception of Bruce Reitherman as Mowgli. The songs are not the best to ever be featured in an animated Disney film, but they are acceptable.
This was the last animated feature, of many, that Walt Disney produced in his career, and it came into theatres nearly a year after his death. It was apparently a box office success, which it deserved to be. It showed that Disney's movie franchise was still going strong thirty years after the release of the flick that started it, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". I'm not familiar with the source material (a collection of stories by Rudyard Kipling), which is usually the case with me and these Disney adaptations, but judging this version of "The Jungle Book" just as a film, I think it's good family entertainment, and obviously many would agree with me. There may be more for kids in the film than there is for adults, but many adults could enjoy it as well (that can be said about any good Disney movie), adults who still like animated family adventures.