Release Date: October 18, 1967
Watch Date: July 8 – July 9, 2023
“Experience the song-filled celebration of friendship, fun and adventure that was the last film to receive Walt Disney’s personal touch. Embark on a thrilling, adventure-filled journey with the boy Mowgli as he makes his way through the jungle to the man-village with Bagheera, the wise panther. Along the way he meets jazzy King Louie, the hypnotic snake Kaa and the lovable, happy-go-lucky bear Baloo, who teaches Mowgli ‘The Bare Necessities’ of life and the true meaning of friendship.”
I know, I know, there’s no theme to June, and this is out of sequence, and then you were watching “The Lion King” movies, and that was all out of sequence. Look, I get it. I do. But sometimes life happens. Sometimes you get sick, sometimes, you get on a “Lion King” kick, and sometimes, your son tells you how much loves the “bears just want to have fun song,” and you spend two days trying to figure out what on earth that means, and then when you discover it’s “The Bare Necessities” you kind of feel obligated to watch the movie with him, because he’s been asking for forty-eight hours and you’ve been watching a lot of bear compilations online completely confused at to what’s popped in to your five-year-old’s brain.
So, here we are “The Jungle Book” and I’m kind of glad we got to it early because, guess what, our son found this super boring so – hopefully – we never have to go through it again. Until the live action version. Which Bob insists is much more entertaining than the animated version (he’d never watched the animated version before this, I’ve never watched the live action), so we’ll see how that plays out. I do not have high hopes.
And it’s not fair, really, that “The Jungle Book” is so boring. Baloo and Bagheera have become Disney classics, Shere Khan is a well-known Disney villain with a voice that does not quit, most Disney fans would recognize Kaa, and King Louie…well we’ll get to him. The songs are fantastic, I’ve been marching my kids around to “Colonel Hathi’s March” since they could walk – hey, you got to inspire them to get to the car faster somehow – much to the confusion of both my children and my husband, until the song came on and they both looked at me with annoyed understanding. “The Bare Necessities” and “I Wanna Be Like You” are two of Disney’s most famous songs, and for good reason. They’re fantastic! They’re fun to sing to all these decades later, and they’ll be stuck in your head for days. But it’s the bits between the songs that are boring.
Now, I personally blame this on the source material. When Disney gets to be Disney, letting the characters have fun, make some jokes, dance and sing, the movie feels alive and interesting. My kids are engaged, dancing around in their seats, and even Bob is singing along. But all the walking through the jungle, the slow pacing, the very monotone backgrounds…it’s liable to put you to sleep. But “The Jungle Book,” the collection of short stories, was first released in 1894, and the style of writing and dialogue and pacing that keeps people entertained was very different back then. Doesn’t make the story a bad book, does make for a boring film. Because look, people don’t remember “The Jungle Book” for it’s plot. They don’t. It’s not it’s little vignettes into different animals lives, it’s not it’s animation style, it’s not it’s side characters. People remember “The Jungle Book” for the songs. And the animation that was shared between other Disney movies. That’s it. Frankly, I don’t blame them. But a good collection of songs, does not a good movie make.
We did get to play spot the racism and that was…pretty easy. Not going to lie. Now, the elephants are stand up British soldiers, and the vultures are the Beatles for some reason, and even Shere Khan is British, and Kaa is Winnie the Pooh – good luck not hearing that now, but King Louie and his band of monkeys… “I Wanna Be Like You” is such a good song. It’s such a good song. And we wouldn’t have gotten it if King Louie hadn’t been portrayed as African-American. But did we have to portray the great ape, and his associated monkeys brethren, as the only African-Americans in this film? It’s 1967 by this point, and I’m not saying we were all the most culturally sensitive in the 60s, but surely we had to know a little bit better than that. And I don’t know how to fix it because, like I said, “I Wanna Be Like You” is a fantastic song, and I don’t know how to separate it from King Louie’s portrayal. But, much like Kaa being Winnie the Pooh, once you’ve seen what they’ve done you struggle to unsee it. And it just feels…uncomfortable.
In the end, after the aforementioned song was over our son lost complete interest in the film and went to go play Minecraft instead, and I don’t blame him, but Bob and I are dedicated to our task, and so we promptly turned the film off and resolved to finish it the next day. Which we did, while our children were visiting my parents so that we could loudly complain about how bored we were – which we did. So, for all intents and purposes, I don’t think our son will be begging to watch the “bears just want to have fun” song again, and if he does, I’m pretty sure it’ll be just the song on YouTube from here on out. I do not blame him.
Doc and Bob's Disney Adventure 
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