Why The Jungle Book (2016) is the best movie ever made.

MOSTLY SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

How can anyone make a statement so general as calling something the “best movie ever made?”  Especially someone like me who, generally, “hates everything?”

How dare I make such a statement in 2016, after over 100 years of already established best-movies-ever-mades!  Disney’s new remake of The Jungle Book cannot possibly out-rank other classic best-movies-ever-mades like The Godfather, The Empire Strikes Back, Fight Club, Back to the Future and Casablanca!  What about Lord of the Rings?!  What about Hitchcock?!  What about Kubrick?!

My answer would be, that all of those movies get out-ranked because they are all old and boring.  Hear me out… it’s not that they are boring movies by any means.  It’s just boring to me to continue to call a forty year old movie that you’ve seen a billion times, read a zillion articles about, and have had a ka-jillion biased feelings towards, continue to be, forever considered the best-movie-ever-made.  It’s like those people that hate all “new music” because nothing will ever be as good as Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, and that is that.  They might be right, but OF COURSE THEY’RE NOT RIGHT!  You gotta live in the NOW people, has Wayne’s World taught you nothing??? What I’m attempting to say is, that in our current smart-phone - A.D.D. - Netflix - lives, nothing matters anymore except what’s new.

Unfortunately, what’s new is usually terrible.  Seems like only once or twice in a year, if we’re lucky, we get a movie that is actually not-terrible.  This year we get The Jungle Book.  It’s such a good movie that it makes me want to scream out clichés like, “Instant classic!” “Disney magic!” “It made me feel like a kid again!” “I can’t wait to see it again!” and “IT’S THE BEST MOVIE EVER MADE!”

But, but… What about all the modern/current best-movies-ever-mades, like Inception, The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Inside Out?!   What about Tarantino?! What about the Coen Brothers?!  What about Wes Anderson?!

My answer would be, that all those movies get out-ranked because they all have a special targeted audience.  Pixar is for kids, Tarantino is for adults, Wes Anderson is for the sophisticated, and Mad Max is for boys (dodges tomato).   There’s nothing wrong with having a targeted audience, but The Jungle Book wins because it’s for literally, all audiences.  It’s a movie for the masses!  Bring everybody with you when you go see it; the wife, the kids, grandma, the homeless guy down the block, EVERYBODY!  Everybody will love the thrills, the effects, the cute animals, and even the kid!  It’s the kind of movie that will bring people together.  It’s the kind of movie that can save the world!  Nobody cannot love this movie!  ISIS would love this movie!

Trust me, I’m as shocked as you are about how much I loved The Jungle Book.  I certainly wasn’t excepting to.  In fact, I wasn’t sure that I even knew how to love a movie anymore.  I’m usually the first guy griping about how there’s way too many remakes/reboots/sequels/prequels/tie-ins/spin-offs out there.  I ho-hummed at the trailer, complaining that Disney already re-made this movie in the 90’s (if you remember Stephen Sommer’s action/adventure 1994 piece-of-garbage.  The one with 30-year-old-Chinese-kung-fu Mowgli, animals that don’t talk, and John Cleese).  I also dreaded having to endure a pure CGI jungle, and another (shudder) green-screen movie.

But still… it’s the best movie ever made?  EVER???

Well, why not?  The story is simply fantastic, and so, so well written.  Screenwriter Justin Marks (with oddly enough only one screen credit so far… and oddly enough it’s Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-li) succeeded in tributing all the elements that you remember and love, (Mowgli singing on Baloo’s belly, Kaa’s hypnotizing eyes, King Louie’s ruins); with adding new elements that actually seem completely necessary (no the-Grinch-learns-how-to-shave sequences in this one).  I can’t say I’m too familiar with the original novel by Rudyard Kipling, but I am very familiar with the original animated 1967 Disney film.  Marks and Director Jon Favreau, prove that the movie did indeed deserve a remake, and now is the right time to make one.  They follow the storyline of the original film, and add just enough to make the plot make even better sense than before, (establishing a real reason for Mowgli’s relationship with Baloo; connections throughout with the “red flower” that tie the themes together nicely; there’s proper motivation for Shere Khan's hatred for Mowgli and mankind, etc).  He also manages to leave out everything that is questionable and ridiculous from the original (jazz music, elephants that act like army soldiers, whiny-pouty Mowgli, those bizarre buzzards that act like The Beatles, etc).

The performances are nothing short of perfect.  Bill Murray is the stand-out as Baloo, Ben Kinsley nailed Bagheera, and all of the rest of voices are very fitting for their various animals.  Even Scarlett Johansson as the snake!  But Neel Sethi’s charming, and surprisingly not-annoying performance as Mowgli steals the show.  Which is such a credit to Favreau, considering that the kid was really just interacting with green backgrounds and people in motion capture ping-pong-outfits.

Speaking of the green-screen, color me impressed!

I saw the movie in 2-D (for lack of a better term), and when there wasn’t long grass involved, the green screen effects were practically seamless!  I completely bought the world they created, and I feel that it was the right decision to Mary Poppins the movie (putting real people in a cartoon world), rather than Roger Rabbit the movie (putting cartoons in a real world).

Also worth mentioning is the music.  It is a perfect mix of the original score from the 1967 movie, with new material by composer John Debney.  The inclusion of the classic songs “Bare Necessities” and “I Wanna be Like You,” felt so natural and welcomed.  The film does not break into song like the ridiculous distractions in most musicals.  The songs fit into the dialogue and the score, with you barely even noticing that they are singing all of a sudden.

I could go on and on.  There’s nothing wrong with this movie, and there’s nothing that I would change.  It is a perfect film, and I declare, that right now, in April of 2016, The Jungle Book is the current, universal, and now-standing BEST MOVIE EVER MADE.