Film review: ‘The Jungle Book’

There’s a neat trick at the start of “The Jungle Book” - after the camera swoops down the star-dusted Disney castle title card, it continues to pull back along a river into the heart of darkness. As we know, everything the light touches is Walt’s kingdom. On the riverside is a forest full of terrors in which Mowgli, the man cub (Neel Sethi), races with his lupine brethren.

Jon Favreau directs a film that has arrived with the technology needed to produce it - flawless CGI makes the wolves’ every hair individuated, the plants greenhouse lush and the waterfalls fast-flowing thunder. Though raised in a wolf pack, Mowgli is mostly bossed by the black panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley, full of lordly KBE elocution). The Law of the Jungle is a catechism of cooperation taught over and over.

As an antidote to all the rules, Mowgli finds Baloo, a character that proves Bill Murray was born to voice a semi-hibernating sloth bear. And, while this telling of the tale does away with the full musical nature of the animated original, one does not deny that evergreen ode to idleness, “Bear Necessities.” Murray’s version is seemingly inspired by having drunk too much … honey.

One animal who never sings is Mowgli’s tiger antagonist Shere Khan. The owner of “best name in literary history,” he’s elaborately scarred by fire and burns with the voice of Idris Elba (who finds the perfect balance of charm and malevolence that he mastered as Stringer Bell on “The Wire”). He spits bitter and violent throwaway lines for Mowgli, “Did you think I’d let you grow old?”

And the maimed tiger isn’t the only scary megalomaniac in the jungle. Mowgli flees one for another, King Louie, a gargantuan orangutan of the ancien régime who roosts in an abandoned temple. Though Louie has Christopher Walken’s voice - and eyes - the character most closely resembles a simian Brando from “Apocalypse Now,” feted with papayas by his howling monkey acolytes. To ensure his everlasting power, Louie demands that Mowgli bring him what only humans possess - “the red flower” - which is to say, fire.

“The Jungle Book” is a well-executed if not (narratively-speaking) adventurous film with one truly exquisite sequence. Mowgli, on his own again, climbs up a tree into the foggy nightmares of the overstory where he’s quickly discovered by Kaa, an enormous, hypnotizing python.

Unlike the other animals in the film, she is not motivated by surviving the present - she is about that much more dangerous subject: the past. Scarlett Johansson proved in “Her” that she’s an excellent voice actress and, as Kaa, she makes Mowgli look into her glowing amber eyes and tells him the story of his life, which is troubling indeed. The boy can never be a wolf or panther or bear because he is, despite his best intentions, Man - who will one day reduce all of the animal kingdom to flickering shadows on a wall.

“The Jungle Book” is at Sonoma 9 Cinemas. Rated PG. Running time 1:45.