Being raised in the jungle all of his life, you'd think Mowgli would have a harder time fitting in with normal society. Sure, Mowgli is upset with the general rules and restrictions of civilized life, but in the next breath he appears to be perfectly fine with chores and family life. His foster human family spout tired clichés such as "You can take the boy out of the Jungle..." but Mowgli hardly does anything to show his jungle roots.
There is no denying that The Jungle Book provided rich characters and background to work with, however, this film doesn't do anything new with them. In fact, it felt like a hollow echo of the original movie. I felt like I was watching the same chase scenes, the same dance routines, but with none of the vitality and originality of the first movie. This feels like a made for video feature, and I'm actually surprised to realize it was released in theaters. Still, when you watch the special features, the people behind this feature try to brag that this is better than the original in some ways. I'm sorry, but that really got under my skin.
One of the things that they try to claim superiority in is the shadows and shading. True, the 1967 original was rather flatly colored, with little in the way of shadow effects. But you never noticed it because of the wonderful line work and lively motion going on in every frame. The Jungle Book 2 features a rather cheap looking white halo effect for highlights and a similar grey halo for shadows. Often, characters don't appear to have any weight, and they often don't seem to be firmly touching the ground they should be standing on. In short, this film just isn't up to quality standards of 30 years ago, and it's definitely not up to the motion picture quality standards for modern day animation either.
At least for what it is, this DVD is fairly good. It features a quick menu to get back to your favorite songs in the movie, if you have kids that happened to enjoy it. It also has a couple of simple games to play with your remote control, though it's nothing too ground-breaking as far as DVD games go. Another good feature is the quick synopsis of the first movie. It will help kids who haven't seen the original The Jungle Book understand this movie, especially since The Jungle Book 2 not only borrows ideas from the first movie, it is practically just an echo of it.
In short, it's difficult to recommend this to Disney fans. As the special features explain, The Jungle Book is the last film that Walt Disney himself worked on. Perhaps that is why this lacking tribute is so painful to watch. I'm sure very young children will still get a kick out of this DVD, but I'd personally recommend you go out and buy the original, and only check this out as a rental.
