Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book does the one thing a remake has to do before it earns the right to do anything else: it justifies its own existence. Disney’s 2016 film takes Rudyard Kipling’s story collection and Walt Disney’s 1967 animated feature and braids them into something that belongs to neither entirely. The result is a 106-minute fantasy adventure that rests almost entirely on the small shoulders of a ten-year-old newcomer.
Trailer, via Rotten Tomatoes Trailers.
Neel Sethi carries a jungle of pixels
The Jungle Book lives or dies on Mowgli, and Favreau cast a newcomer to play him. Thousands of children auditioned across the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada. Neel Sethi won the part, and casting director Rebecca Williams described him as embodying “the heart, humor, and daring of the character. He’s warm and accessible, yet also has an intelligence well beyond his years and impressed us all with his ability to hold his own in any situation.”
That last clause is the whole movie. Sethi underwent parkour training for the role, and it shows in how he moves — scrambling, climbing, sprinting through a world that was filmed entirely in Los Angeles and built almost entirely in computers. Every animal around him is photorealistic animation. He is acting against nothing.
It works. Sethi plays Mowgli as a naive and stubborn ten-year-old raised by the Seeonee wolf pack, a boy who wants to stay in the jungle even when staying means dying. The stubbornness is the point. Without it the character is just a lost child; with it he is a person making a bad decision for a good reason.
Idris Elba gives the tiger a case, not just an appetite
Idris Elba voices Shere Khan, a murderous Bengal tiger who arrives at a dry-season truce watering hole and threatens to kill Mowgli once the drought breaks. The plot turns on that threat. The wolves debate whether to keep the boy. Mowgli leaves to protect his family. Bagheera, voiced by Ben Kingsley, volunteers to guide him to the man-village.
Elba plays the tiger as a creature with a grievance, not just a hunger. Shere Khan’s complaint is specific and he states it plainly, and the film is better for letting him. When he kills Akela, voiced by Giancarlo Esposito, to lure Mowgli back, the violence lands because the film has already established what the pack leader meant.
The Jungle Book is a family film that does not pretend its villain is harmless. That is a real choice, and it is the right one.
Baloo, Bagheera and the slack middle act
Bill Murray voices Baloo, the free-spirited bear who rescues Mowgli from Kaa. Scarlett Johansson voices the seductive Indian python who hypnotizes the boy and shows him a vision of his biological father being killed by Shere Khan while trying to protect him. Kaa also explains the Red Flower — fire — which destroys anything it touches.
Mowgli repays Baloo with honey and agrees to stay until winter. Bagheera finds them both and is incensed that Mowgli has not joined the humans. Baloo calms him and persuades him to sleep on it.
That middle stretch is where The Jungle Book sags. The bear-and-boy bonding is warm and Murray is funny, but the film spends its least urgent scenes here, and the threat of Shere Khan goes quiet for too long. Christopher Walken’s King Louie arrives as a set piece rather than a story turn.
A boy, a ditch, and a herd of elephants
The film’s best sequence has almost no dialogue. During the night, Mowgli finds a herd of Asian elephants gathered around a ditch and uses vines to save their baby. It is the moment the character stops being a boy the jungle tolerates and becomes someone who belongs in it.
Baloo realizes he cannot guarantee Mowgli’s safety once he learns the boy is targeted by Shere Khan, and reluctantly agrees to push him away. The push is the emotional hinge of the film. It is also where Favreau’s direction is cleanest.
The numbers behind the legend
| Element | The Jungle Book (2016) | The Jungle Book (1967) |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Live-action with photorealistic animation | Traditional animation |
| Director | Jon Favreau | — |
| Writer | Justin Marks | — |
| Runtime | 106 minutes | — |
| Mowgli | Neel Sethi | — |
| Source | Kipling’s collection plus the 1967 film | Kipling’s collection, loosely |
| Premiere | April 4, 2016, El Capitan Theatre | — |
| U.S. release | April 15, 2016 | — |
Key facts
- Runtime: 106 minutes
- Premiere: April 4, 2016, El Capitan Theatre
- U.S. theatrical release: April 15, 2016
- Worldwide gross: $966.6 million
- 2016 rank: fifth-highest-grossing film of the year
- Metacritic: 77/100
- Our score: 7.7/10
What the remake borrows and what it earns
Favreau, Marks and producer Brigham Taylor built the story as a balance between the 1967 animated feature and Kipling’s original works, borrowing from both. That balance is the film’s smartest decision and its most visible seam. The Jungle Book does not always hide where one ends and the other begins.
Principal photography began in 2014, all of it in Los Angeles, with extensive computer-generated imagery standing in for every animal and setting. That production choice is the reason the film holds up. The jungle is not a location that will age; it is a rendering, and the rendering is photorealistic enough that Sethi never looks like he is standing in a void.
The film grossed $966.6 million worldwide, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2016 and a critical and commercial success. Rotten Tomatoes’ critical consensus called it “as lovely to behold as it is engrossing to watch.” That is fair, and it is also slightly generous.
Where the remake lands
The Jungle Book earns its 7.7/10. It is a technical achievement that does not lean on the technology as a crutch, a remake that understands both of its parents, and a showcase for a child who had every reason to be swallowed by the scale and never is. Sethi is the reason to watch it. Elba is the reason to remember it.
What holds it back is the middle. The Baloo section runs long, King Louie is spectacle without stakes, and the film’s momentum dips exactly when it should be tightening. The elephants and the ditch, the truce at the watering hole, the ambush on the way to the man-village — those are the scenes that justify the remake. The honey-and-napping stretch between them does not.
Disney has spent years converting its animated catalog into live-action features, and most of them are exercises in recall. The Jungle Book is not. It is a film that took Kipling’s darkness and Disney’s warmth and found a boy who could hold both. That it sags in the middle is a flaw, not a failure. That it works at all, with one live performer and a computer for everything else, is the achievement worth noting.
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