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Wife and daughter want to see, so looking to see if anyone has, and what they thought. Mind, I have almost no knowledge of Kipling's book.

Everything I've read and heard about it is surprisingly positive. It has more of an epic adventure feel than the original animated version, but still has been reviewing strongly. I'd give it a shot.

Definitely a twist on it, so if you've seen the animated version this plays out differently.

Great voice acting, although Bill Murray's Baloo annoyed me as he's much more selfish than the animated version.

Also, Mowgli grows up quick in this, not as carefree as the animated.

Overall, a really good movie, but darker than the animated version, definitely a PG-13 movie.

 jreilly89 wrote:
Definitely a twist on it, so if you've seen the animated version this plays out differently.

Speaking of different takes on the Jungle Book...

Alrighty.

1. As someone who never read Jungle Book, nor saw the Disney film, but may have at one time been stalked by mastadons and sabre toothed tigers: I found the following excellent: the cinematography/CGI was stunning, the writing was good, and the voice acting spectacular.

I was very pleasantly surprised by Bill Murray and Idris Ilba's performances. I did not realize how impressive Ben Kingsley's voice is. The show stealer was Christopher Walken as some sort of ape playing a Konrad Kurze routine, then breaking out into a trippy song. Loved it.
Parts were intense. I'd check with other parents who have seen it before bringing in anyone under five.


2. the Wife-who informed me that Jungle Book was her favorite childhood book, absolutely loved it. She did elbow me twice when I was rooting for the tiger. Evidently rooting for the good guy to just eat everyone is frowned upon in this establishment.

A lot of the books Disney adapts for the big screen often have quite grimdark stories in the source material. Seriously, go check out The Little Mermaid and Hunchback of Notre Dame. Really grim.

I've never seen the Jungle Book, I've never read whatever it's based on, and I have zero experience with anything Jungle Book related. I'm off today and hungry for popcorn, so we're gonna go see it in about an hour or so. I'll let you know what we thought. I'm worried it might be a kids movie but it's either Jungle Book (94% on RT) or that Huntsman movie which looks very dubious even before you consider it has, like, a 15% on RT or something.

Kipling's entire output is in the public domain and can be got completely free on Kindle. At that price I highly recommend downloading it and have a browse.

Apart from the famous "imperial" stories of the British Raj, such as The Jungle Book, Kim, and Plain Tales From The Hills, the Stalky & Co stories give a vivid impression of minor public school life in the mid-Victorian age, that produced the mid-ranking officers and white collar workers who created, administered and reported on the Victorian British Empire.

Kipling also wrote a number of social-political commentaries, some good documentary journalism, and some SF stuff that nowadays has a weird steampunk flavour to it.

On top of all that you have got his well-known poetry.

 Frazzled wrote:
The show stealer was Christopher Walken as some sort of ape playing a Konrad Kurze routine, then breaking out into a trippy song. Loved it.

Agree with your entire review, but I can't echo this enough. His version of "I Wanna Be Like You" is amazing.

Well, it was pretty OK. Maybe a little bit of a kids movie, but once you got past what felt like 45 minutes of trailers for kid's movies, the film itself was OK. Voice work was nice. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it if you have kids. If you don't have kids, it's watchable, but nothing special.

 Ouze wrote:
Well, it was pretty OK. Maybe a little bit of a kids movie, but once you got past what felt like 45 minutes of trailers for kid's movies, the film itself was OK. Voice work was nice. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it if you have kids. If you don't have kids, it's watchable, but nothing special.

Perfectly sums up my feelings, as well.