The Jungle Book 2

Movie Title: The Jungle Book 2
Official Website (it might still work): The Jungle Book 2
Rating (out of 10): 2
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens
Buy the: Video/DVD \| Soundtrack
The Review:

As a young child I recall reading along to Disney's The Jungle Book with those red colored cassettes. I probably even sang along to "The Bear Necessities," but as former President Reagan once said, I don't recall. So add 30 plus years to the original film (and a good 100 years since Rudyard Kipling penned the classics, The Jungle Books) and add some new songs, and you get a new musical kid's movie that I can now loathe.

In this edition, young Mowgli has grown up a little and now lives in a village, and as Chris Farley used to say, down by the river. Unfortunately for him, the tiger Shere Khan (Tony Jay, Treasure Planet) is still pissed about Mowgli lighting his tail on fire. Apparently this act by Mowgli (Haley Joel Osment, Artificial Intelligence) has made Khan a laughingstock amongst the jungle animals. Plus Mowgli (or bear cub or even man cub) is not adjusting well to village life where there are lots of rules to follow. But in the village is a fair maiden about his age named Shanti (Mae Whitman, Hope Floats) who he is a bit enamored with. There is also his adopted family including a younger brother named Ranjan (Connor Funk), which keeps him there. Well, one day Mowgli's old friend Baloo (John Goodman, Monsters, Inc.), AKA Papa Bear, has a hankering to visit his bear cub, so off he goes to the village. Bagheera the black panther (Bob Joles), a friend of both Baloo and Mowgli, tries to stop Baloo with the help of Cornell Hathi (Jim Cummings, Return to Never Land) and his fellow elephants, but they just can't stop the clever bear. Bagheera misses Mowgli too, but knows that it is best if Mowgli is raised in the village. Well old Baloo catches up to Mowgli and the two head off into the jungle, the mighty jungle (wait, wrong movie), for some musical numbers while Shanti goes after them under the wrong impression that some wild bear has kidnapped her boyfriend (little Ranjan then follows her). This also opens up the opportunity for Shere Khan to easily extract his revenge upon Mowgli. It also allows for some comedy bits by some vultures, led by Lucky (Phil Collins).

This Steve Trenbirth directed movie is only a shadow of what the first film was. Basically Disney is just re-hashing the original film into something that is only fit to be aired on the Disney Channel. For instance, the most catchy and memorable song from The Jungle Book 2 is "The Bear Necessities," just as it was in the original film. Plus the animation is the same as what was used 30 years ago, not the new 3-D computer generated stuff that Pixar has done with other Disney films like Toy Story 2. So, one of the only positives was that this film was rather short in duration. The only other good aspect was that some of the jokes were funny. Now if I was six years old I might have enjoyed it more, but I'm not, so the movie only gets two couches from me.