by Frank Wilkins
Never question Disney marketers. I won't. And that's why I say that bringing Jungle Book 2 to the big screen rather than sending it straight to the video shelves will be marketing gold for Disney. Many of us Baby Boomers saw and fell in love, more than thirty years ago, with the original screen adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's story of Mowgli, Baloo and Bagheera and now we want our children to enjoy it as well. Sure, it won't set box office records but it's nice to see two old jungle pals join together again and swing like crazy in the jungle. It's like seeing an old great duo getting back together for a reunion tour.
While the first Jungle Book was made magical by the music and the jungle experience with its jiving number "Bare Necessities", The Jungle Book 2 focuses more on the characters and kicks up the emotional intensity a few notches. The sadness is sadder, the happiness is happier and the peril is more... well, perilous.
We join Mowgli (voiced by Haley Joel Osment), a wild boy who was raised in the jungle by a pack of wolves, as he has adapted to his new life in the "man village". But as the first musical number, Jungle Rhythm, suggests, "you can high-tail it out of the jungle but it never leaves your heart". While comfortable and well cared for, he still longs for his past life and wishes to return to the companionship of his good ole' swingin' pals Baloo (voiced by John Goodman) and Bagheera (voiced by Bob Joles). He ignores the orders of his adopted father and escapes back into the jungle.
The story falls a bit short on the imagination scale, as we are not introduced to any significantly new characters. But if we think about it for a minute, although it has been three decades since we last saw the prequel, this new story actually is an immediate continuation of the old story. Further, there is a whole generation of youngsters who are not familiar with the original so it might make sense that it could work the magic again. We are run through the gamut of emotions; from happiness and joy, to fear and danger. There's even a little bit of stand-up comedy provided by the voice of Phil Collins as Lucky, the vulture.
The animation of the original Jungle Book is adequate and although now we see it as a bit primitive, it was fairly representative of the animation of the time. The characters were drawn in a thin multi-lined black outline that gave the subjects a kind of crude, unfinished and sketchy look. 1961's 101 Dalmations was drawn in the same manner. In The Jungle Book 2 the animation is superb with clean, crisp outlines, 3-dimensional shading and top-notch movements that we expect from today's Disney studios. They did seem to take a few shortcuts; the most noticeable was in one of the branches with leaves that was used as a prop while dancing. Even though the branch was a foreground object, it seemed really fuzzy and undefined, much how you would expect a background object to appear.
The Jungle Book 2 is not a smashingly great Disney animated story that will challenge The Lion King for Jungle supremacy. But it is a nice G-rated kid's fairy-tale type story which takes the same formula that made the prequel so enchanting, mixes in a few new musical numbers by Lorraine Feather and Paul Grabowsky, enhances the sequences involving Shere Khan the tiger (voiced by Tony Jay), and deepens the emotional impact of the story's main characters. We struggle right alongside Mowgli as he is forced to decide whether he will live the life in which he grew up or spend his time in the "man village" where the other humans think he belongs. In the end he reaches a nice solution and we see that the love of our heritage can blend nicely with our current "man-world".
Frank Wilkins
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The Jungle Book 2 (2003)
