![]() Pulling freely from Kipling’s stories, Disney’s own animated treatment, and the inventions of screenwriter Justin Marks, this “Jungle Book” certainly imposes a bit more of a strict hero’s-journey framework onto the source materials, yet rarely does it lapse into the sort of po-faced seriousness that tends to sour so many aggressively modernized fairy stories. It can’t rival the woolly looseness of Disney’s 1967 animated classic, of course, but it succeeds on its own so well that such comparisons are barely necessary. His lightness of touch proves an enormous asset, as he builds this jungle into the type of dangerous, sometimes pitiless setting that an average 10-year-old would nonetheless never want to leave. ![]() Maintaining the buoyant heartbeat beneath all the digital flash, Favreau never loses sight of the fact that he’s making an adventure story for children - no small matter in a kid-pic landscape flooded with inappropriately gritty reboots and frenetic distraction devices - and when positive word of mouth arrives to buttress Disney’s all-out marketing efforts, the studio should have a substantial hit on its hands.įavreau already has one four-star family pic to his credit with “Elf,” but the most important touchstone from his filmography here is probably “Iron Man,” in which the director hit all the marks of an effects-heavy tentpole while still allowing the film to breathe where it needed to. But aside from investing in top-drawer digital craftsmanship, perhaps the canniest move Disney made on this film was hiring Jon Favreau to helm it. ![]() Of all of the impressive details to appear on screen in Disney’s live-action adaptation of “ The Jungle Book,” none is more startling than a title card at the close of the end credits reading: “Filmed in Downtown Los Angeles.” So immersively does the film’s visual-effects team craft every tree, waterfall and flower of Rudyard Kipling’s fantastical subcontinental setting, and so carefully are the talking CGI animals rendered, it almost beggars belief that the whole thing was shot in a 12-story building overlooking the 110 freeway. ![]()
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