THE JUNGLE BOOK (2016)

Jon Favreau’s film based on the famous novel of the same name by Rudyard Kipling while keeping certain elements of the classic Disney animated film succeeds by staying truer to the original story and the help of truly dazzling visual effects. With a fine screenplay by Justin Marks, ninety nine percent of this film’s visuals are due to CGI (computer graphics imagery) with really the only live action being the character of Mowgli, very well played by Neel Sethi and a few villagers seen at a distance for a very brief period of time. Though these animals look real and retain most of their natural animal instincts, they still talk and react as human beings. If you can get over this you’ll have a good time with plenty of laughs to be had by Baloo, well voiced by Bill Murray to extraordinary comic effect. In fact the entire cast of voice actors is excellent and well deserving of praise among them Ben Kingsley as Bagheera, Idris Elba as Shere Khan, Lupita Nyong’o as Raksha, Scarlett Johansson as Kaa, Giancarlo Esposito as Akela and Christopher Walken as King Louie. But again what is most amazing is the look of the film which is in the same league with AVATAR as far as creating a realistic looking world all from the eye of a computer. Filmed with a lavish budget of $175 million dollars it truly does show itself on screen with a compelling story to boot.