The Jungle Book (2016)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on April 17, 2016 @ tonymacklin.net.

Time trumps on.

It's time to make Mowgli great again.

He first was portrayed by Sabu in 1942. Then in 1967 in an animated remake by Disney, Mowgli was voiced by Bruce Reitherman.

This time out, in the second Disney version, director Jon Favreau inserts a human actor Neel Sethi to play Mowgli in a film with animated characters.

Favreau replaces the previous Disney version's "simple bare necessities" with simple CGI necessities. Actually they're not simple - they're almost overwhelming.

The memories from time past are CGI'd into oblivion.

Sabu is forgotten, even though he first embodied Mowgli. After Alan Ladd and Huntz Hall, Sabu was one of my favorite actors. I loved The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

Sabu has been replaced by novice Neel Sethi. Sethi is no Sabu.

The latest version is voiced by a stellar cast - especially Scarlett Johansson as the mesmerizing Kaa and Idris Elba as Shere Khan. Elba can make any character indelibly menacing.

Icons Bill Murray and Christopher Walker also are terrific. They replace Phil Harris and Louie Prima, but I miss the spirit of the former duo. The inimitable Phil Harris - who gave vibrant, uplifting voice to Baloo, singing "Bare Necessities" - is forgotten today.

If you asked 100 people on the street, "who is Phil Harris?" no one would know. "I think he's Dr. Phil."

Sabu, Harris, Prima, et al. are gone. But CGI - in all its splendor - is here to stay.

It's a Not Brave New World. It teems with remakes.

There's a new Gutbusters with Melissa McCarthy. I mean, Ghostbusters. The Dirty Dozen is to be remade. The Magnificent Seven is remade. Even though it stars the inestimable Denzel Washington, it can't be as fresh and good as the original.

The Jungle Book was the last feature that Walt Disney oversaw. For him CGI was character-generated-imagery.

Times have changed. I can see Leonardo DiCaprio practicing his Charles Foster Kane.

I can imagine the dancing girls in CGI.

Imagine the sled exploding!

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