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The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story
Genre:
Comedy Adventure
Directed By:
Nick Marck
Produced By:
Mark H. Ovitz
Written By/Screenplay:
José Rivera
Based On:
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
Starring:
Brandon Baker Brian Doyle-Murray Eartha Kitt Clancy Brown Peri Gilpin Sherman Howard
Photography:
Color
Release Date:
September 29, 1998
Runtime:
77 minutes
Country:
United States
Sequel:
The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli and Baloo (in chronological film order) The Jungle Book 2 The Jungle Book (2016)
The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story is a 1998 American adventure film directed by Nick Mark, produced by Mark H. Orvitz, and written by José Rivera and Jim Herzfeld. It is the third film adaptation by The Walt Disney Company of the Mowgli stories from The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard Kipling. It stars Brandon Baker and features the voice work of Brian Doyle-Murray, Eartha Kitt, Clancy Brown, Peri Gilpin, and Sherman Howard.
The film chronicles the life of a boy named Mowgli from when he lived with humans as an infant to when he was raised by wild animals and rediscovered by humans again as a teenager.
Why This "Story" Should Go Suck A Beehive Instead (Bad Qualities)
First and foremost, the storyline of this movie is incredibly tiresome and predictable, since it revolves around yet another movie about Mowgli getting lost in the Indian jungle in which he is raised by Raksha and the wolf pack and befriends Bagheera and Baloo, which has already been shoehorned in a handful of Jungle Book related adaptations, including Disney's own 1967 film adaptation of The Jungle Book, and it's follow up live-action 1994 film of the same name.
A lot of the characters in the movie come off as annoying, unlikable, and sometimes filler, including some of the main characters themselves.
Tabaqui is portrayed as a mindless spotted hyena who lacks a personality other than being an awfully unfunny jokester who is supposed to serve as Shere Khan's henchman.
Chil is portrayed as a carcass-grubbing vulture who spends her time perservating about animal carcasses way too much instead of serving as Raksha's messenger.
The trio of chimpanzees serve no purpose in the film other than being annoying brats who were made just so we can root for even though they get no real mention in the books.
The same thing can be said with the trio of turtles who do nothing but stare at Mowgli every time he plunges into the river.
The bad baboons are practically the worst offenders as they lack a personality other than to torture Baryani by smacking him with sticks despite Baryani doing nothing wrong to them.
The music, while decent, is rather lackluster, as the soundtrack fits more for a jungle video game instead of a direct-to-video movie.
There are many, MANY geographical errors in this movie, especially from the animals, due to the film's horrid production value and low budget. In other words, a lot of the animals that appear in the movie are not even native to India, which just proves how over-exaggerated this movie is.
First and foremost, Tabaqui in this movie is portrayed as a spotted hyena in this movie for no apparent reason, despite the fact that spotted hyenas are native to Africa.
The same thing can be said with the live primates, including the baboons, the mandrills, and especially the trio of chimpanzees, as all of whom are also found only in Africa, not India. To make matters worse, the Rhesus monkeys is the only live monkeys in the movie that is actually native to India.
In some scenes, exotic birds such as a green wing macaw, a sun conure, a sulfur crested cockatoo, a blue and green macaw, a red crested turaco, and even a pair of African crowned cranes are shown in the movie, even though neither of these birds are native to India at the slightest.
The trio of turtles shown in the movie are red-eared sliders, which are found in North America. The same thing can be said with the honey-grubbing porcupine and the skunk too.
These are not the only errors in this movie. Their are also a lot of factual errors in this movie as well, thanks to the low budget.
Raksha, Akela, and the rest of the wolves are portrayed as wolfdogs, when in real life, Indian wolves are more skinnier, have longer legs, and have tanner fur.
Baloo in the movie is portrayed as a North American black bear, but in the original story, he is portrayed as a sloth bear.
The same thing is said for Chil, who is portrayed as an African white-backed vulture, even though Indian vultures have much darker feathers.
Some characters such as Kaa and King Louie are not seen nor mentioned in the film.
There are also some inappropriate jokes and innuendos in the film as well, though not as much.
In one scene, when Shere Khan denies eating the chimpanzees, he mentioned about chewing Tabaqui if he were eating something and coughing up a furball, which is supposed to be a pointless and unfitting reference to chewing tobacco.
In another scene, as Shere Khan and Tabaqui approach the wolf pack to steal Mowgli, Shere Khan mentions being "shot in the backside" by the villagers, giving off the implication that Shere Khan was shot in the rear end.
In one scene, when Mowgli uncovers the plants to see what is making rattling sounds in the bushes, the Tarzan chimp pops out of the bushes and kiss Mowgli in the lips, which gives off zoophilia implications because The Tarzan chimp is a chimpanzee and Mowgli is human.
There was one infamous moment in which Tabaqui calls out to Baloo by saying ''Yo! Berry breath! Go suck a beehive!" which is an incredibly inappropriate quote to say in a kids' movie, especially given that this one quote is supposed to sound an awful lot like "Go suck a dick".
While the acting is still good, some of the acting can get a tad bit annoying, especially some of the voices for the chimpanzees.
Some of the logic in the movie makes little to no sense:
Bagherra's plan to lure the crazy monkeys away from Mowgli is pointless and makes shockingly no sense, as she pretends to lead the monkeys to a lost island of bananas with bananas so big that two elephants slip on one peel, which causes a plot-hole.
When the chimps lock Mowgli inside of the abandoned hut, one of the chimps questions to him if he likes chocolate or vanilla frosting, which makes no sense because somehow, the chimps know what chocolate and vanilla frosting is despite living in the jungle for their entire lives.
Hypocrisy: One of the female chimps tells Mowgli not to listen to Chil when she is trying to warn Mowgli that the chimps are setting a trap for him, even though at the beginning of the film they never listened to Hathi when he told the chimps not to bathe in the watering hole.
False advertising: Some thumbnails, screenshots, and even some DVD covers show Mowgli handling a skunk, but in the film, he only gets a minimal amount of screen time doing so.
Good Qualites
A majority of the cast still does a good job voicing the characters, Brandon Baker does a good job portraying Mowgli and even resembles his original counterpart from the 1967 film, and the real-life animals do a good job portraying their characters.
The movie is still faithful to the original books, although that definitely doesn't excuse the geographical errors.
There are a few funny moments here and there.
While still bad, it's nowhere near as bad as The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli and Baloo.
At least it is justified why there are so many geographical errors in this movie, which is due to the low budget.
