Tarzan swings into theaters with a promise that could have sunk it: an immortal legend, as you’ve only imagined. Disney’s 1999 animated adventure mostly delivers, and it does so with a story simpler and sadder than the studio’s usual fairy-tale machinery.
The film runs 88 minutes. Chris Buck and Kevin Lima directed, from a screenplay credited to Tab Murphy and the writing team of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White, working from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 story Tarzan of the Apes. It is the first major animated adaptation of that story.
Trailer, via retro VHS trailers.
A Shipwreck and a Leopard Named Sabor
The plot starts in the 1890s. A British couple and their infant son are shipwrecked in equatorial Africa. They build a tree house. A leopard named Sabor kills them.
Kala, a local gorilla whose own son was killed by Sabor, finds the human infant and adopts him. She names him Tarzan. As a seven-year-old, Tarzan befriends Kala’s niece Terk and a paranoid elephant named Tantor. Because of his different appearance and his unorthodox behaviors, the other gorillas treat him differently. Kerchak, the troop’s leader and Kala’s mate, is the hardest to win over.
Tarzan makes valiant efforts to improve himself as he grows. Some years later, Sabor ambushes the gorillas. Tarzan kills her. That act earns him Kerchak’s reluctant respect.
Jane Porter, Archimedes Q. Porter, and Clayton
Then the humans arrive. British explorer Archimedes Q. Porter, his daughter Jane, and their hunter escort William Cecil Clayton come to Africa to study the gorillas. Jane accidentally becomes separated and is chased by baboons until a curious Tarzan rescues her. After comparing her to himself, he realizes they are from the same species.
Jane leads Tarzan back to their camp. Porter and Clayton both take an interest in him, but not for the same reasons. Porter sees scientific progress. Clayton hopes Tarzan will lead the group to the gorillas.
Despite Kerchak’s warning to avoid the strangers, Tarzan repeatedly returns to the camp. The Porters and Clayton teach him to speak English and tell him what the human world is like. Tarzan and Jane begin a romantic relationship. Jane has difficulty convincing Tarzan to lead the humans to the gorillas, because Tarzan fears Kerchak’s fury.
As the explorers’ ship returns to retrieve them, Jane asks Tarzan to travel to England with her. When she says it is unlikely they will return to Africa, Tarzan tries to persuade Jane to stay. The film follows an orphan taken in by gorillas in Africa after a leopard kills his biological parents. He grows into a man and meets other humans. He is soon torn between leaving with them or staying with his animal family.
The Voice Cast Carries the Emotional Weight
Tony Goldwyn voices Tarzan. Minnie Driver voices Jane Porter. Glenn Close voices Kala. Alex D. Linz voices Young Tarzan. Rosie O’Donnell voices Terk. Brian Blessed voices Clayton. Nigel Hawthorne voices Professor Archimedes Q. Porter. Lance Henriksen voices Kerchak. Wayne Knight voices Tantor. Taylor Dempsey voices Young Tantor. Sherry Lynn and Bob Bergen are credited as additional voices.
The cast is doing more than celebrity stunt-casting. Close gives Kala a maternal steadiness that makes the adoption at the center of the film feel earned rather than sentimental. Henriksen’s Kerchak is a wall of disapproval, and the film needs that wall. Without Kerchak’s resistance, Tarzan’s choice at the end costs nothing.
Goldwyn has the hardest job. He has to play a man who does not know he is one, and he has to do it without the visual grammar of a human face doing the acting. He manages it. Driver’s Jane is curious and quick, and the romance between them is built on mutual study rather than instant attraction.
Phil Collins, Mark Mancina, and the Score
English recording artist Phil Collins was recruited to compose and record songs integrated with a score by Mark Mancina. That integration matters. The songs are not interruptions; they carry the passage of time and the interior states the animation cannot show directly.
Pre-production began in 1995. Lima was selected as director, and Buck joined him the same year. Following Murphy’s first draft, Tzudiker, White, Dave Reynolds, and Jeffrey Stepakoff were brought in to reconstruct the third act and add material to the screenplay. Reynolds and Stepakoff received additional screenplay credits in the final cut.
The production team also took a research trip to Uganda and Kenya to study gorillas. The animation combines 2D hand-drawn animation with extensive use of computer-generated imagery.
What the Two Families Actually Offer
The film’s central comparison is not between species. It is between two versions of family, and the script is honest about what each one gives Tarzan.
| Kala and the Gorillas | Jane, Porter, and Clayton | |
|---|---|---|
| What they offer Tarzan | A mother who chose him, a troop, and a place he earned | Language, knowledge of his own species, and a way back to England |
| What they ask of him | To respect Kerchak’s authority and avoid the strangers | To lead the humans to the gorillas |
| What they cost him | Kerchak’s distrust, and a lifetime of being treated as different | The risk of betraying the only family he has known |
Clayton is the one figure who does not fit either column cleanly. He is a hunter escort, and his interest in Tarzan is instrumental from the start. The film is not subtle about him, and it does not need to be.
The Order of the Film’s Best Moments
Ranking what Tarzan does well, from strongest to weakest:
- The adoption. Kala finds an infant whose mother was killed by the same leopard that killed her son, and she takes him anyway. Everything Tarzan does afterward flows from that one decision.
- The killing of Sabor. Tarzan protects the troop and earns Kerchak’s reluctant respect. This is where the film stops being about a boy who is different.
- The camp scenes. Teaching Tarzan English is a necessary plot function, and the film treats it as one. The romance works because Driver and Goldwyn play it as two people studying each other.
- The third act. Tarzan’s decision arrives fast, and the build to it is compressed.
Where the 88 Minutes Go
The runtime is the film’s sharpest advantage. At 88 minutes, Tarzan has no room for the comic sidekick detours that bloat so many animated features of its era. Terk and Tantor are here, and they are funny, but they never take over the movie.
The trade-off is the third act. The screenplay was reconstructed by Tzudiker, White, Reynolds, and Stepakoff after Murphy’s first draft, and you can feel the seams. Jane’s request that Tarzan come to England, her admission that a return to Africa is unlikely, and Tarzan’s counter-persuasion all land in a short stretch. The emotional beat is correct. The build to it is compressed.
That is a real cost. It is also the reason the film moves.
An Immortal Legend, Mostly as Imagined
The film’s best scenes are the ones with the least dialogue. Tarzan killing Sabor to protect the troop is the moment the film stops being a story about a boy who is different and becomes a story about a man who has chosen a side. Kerchak’s reluctant respect is the reward, and the film is smart enough to make it reluctant.
What holds up is the adoption. Kala finds an infant whose mother was killed by the same leopard that killed her son. She takes him anyway. The film knows that this is the engine of everything else.
This is a strong entry in the Disney animated canon. It earns its place there on the strength of its first half and its willingness to end on a choice rather than a rescue. The compressed third act keeps it from being more. The published critical score of 8.0 out of 10, with a Metacritic mark of 80 out of 100, is about right.
8 of 10.
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