Much like how the final Peanuts comic dropped just hours after cartoonist Charles M. Schulz passed away, The Jungle Book hit theaters just 10 months after producer Walt Disney passed away from complications related to lung cancer. This massive box office hit provided a swan song for Disney, who decades earlier had to convince financiers and other artists that audiences would even sit still for a feature-length animated movie. The Jungle Book’s tremendous success was both a reminder that those instincts had been right and that Disney’s animated empire would continue long after he was gone.
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The Jungle Book isn’t just impressive because of its close proximity to Walt Disney’s demise, though. It’s also just a masterful movie on its own merits. In fact, it’s the best motion picture produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios in Walt’s lifetime. Though not as grand in scope as Fantasia or Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book is still a high point for Walt’s animated features.
The Jungle Book is a Delightful Good Time
Comedy is not something early Walt Disney Animation Studios films do well. Those comic relief mice in Cinderella are irritating. The modern technology and pop culture references in The Sword in the Stone are even less amusing. Alice in Wonderland’s attempts at zany levity echoing Lewis Carroll’s kooky original source material were more draining than hysterical. That’s why so many of the most revered early Disney Animation Studios efforts are more serious affairs, like Pinocchio, Bambi, or Fantasia. With The Jungle Book, though, Walt Disney and company let their hair down and actually made an animated feature where the comedy clicked together.
Directors Wolfgang Reitherman and key story personnel Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson, and Vance Gerry concoct The Jungle Book as an unabashedly episodic experience where vibrant character personalities, not rigid three-act plot structure obligations, dictate everything. Critters like Baloo (Phil Harris), King Louie (Louis Prima), and Kaa (Sterling Holloway), among others, are so delightful that this storytelling approach is a virtue, not a detriment. These outsized characters provide hearty laughs even just in tiny pieces of body language, like an inspired piece of animation simulating snake Kaa covering his mouth with his “hand.”
Comedy beats from various odd-couple pairings, such as stuffy panther Bagheera’s (Sebastian Cabot) rapport with Mowgli or his interactions with goofball Baloo, are similarly delightful. The Jungle Book has no shortage of memorable characters who are just so much fun to hang out with. Not only do these animals depart from Disney Animation’s early struggles with comedy, they also make The Jungle Book an outstanding hangout movie. This isn’t an epic romance or grand fantasy adventure film. Instead, this is a movie about laid back conversations and dance parties, which prove sufficient material for The Jungle Book’s entertaining backbone.
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The Jungle Book’s Animation and Voice Cast Are Also Superb
The Jungle Book excels as an outstanding animation showcase. The various Walt Disney Animation Studios animators outdid themselves with finding ways to inject so much personality into animals that often walk on all fours. Nefarious tiger Shere Khan especially flourishes in this department. Khan radiates upper-crust snootiness with the way he examines his claws or puckers his lips in disdain. There’s such entertaining dissonance here, juxtaposing a malicious feline with the personality of a villain in a British costume drama.
Speaking of Shere Khan, he’s brought to life through the vocals of George Sanders. It’s a perfect marriage of a famous voice with an animated character. The modern animated American cinema landscape is infested with too many forced celebrity voice-overs. Such poor casting choices could stand to take some cues from The Jungle Book, which found a collection of famous voices that also perfectly fit their characters. You don’t need to know every inch of Sanders’ filmography to appreciate why he’s so perfect for Shere Khan. He just works superbly as the character, ditto Harris as Baloo or Prima as King Louie.
This exceptional assemblage of voice acting talent belts out the best collection of tunes in the entire Disney Animation Studios canon. Songwriters Richard and Robert Sherman and Terry Gilkyson crank out one banger after another in The Jungle Book’s runtime, from “The Bare Necessities” to “That’s What Friends Are For (The Vulture Song)” to even the final earworm tune “My Own Home.” The Jungle Book works like a charm, it’s just an endlessly entertaining good time. Though he could never have imagined it’d be the last animated film he’d produce, The Jungle Book provided a vibrant send-off to Walt Disney’s animated cinema contributions.
The Jungle Book is now streaming on Disney+.
