The Jungle Book (1967)

Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman. Starring (voices) Sebastian Cabot, Phil Harris, Bruce Reitherman, George Sanders, Sterling Holloway, Louis Prima, J. Pat O’Malley. [G]

Rudyard Kipling’s book is turned into an episodic animated adventure set in the jungles of India, following an orphaned boy (er, “man-cub”) name Mowgli, raised by wolves and shepherded by a panther named Bagheera. Bagheera decides it’s time for the ten-year-old man-cub to return to his own kind, especially with the ruthless tiger Shere Khan roaming their part of the jungle, but Mowgli is bound and determined to stay in the wild. Has its ups and downs, and the animation is more expressive than most of the characterizations (human or beast), so its saving grace is the voice cast, with special marks to Phil Harris’ easygoing demeanor and genial baritone as Baloo the Bear, and George Sanders’ velvety sophistication turning Shere Khan into an intelligent predator. Clint Howard is also on hand, voicing a young elephant. Features several songs, but even with Louis Prima scat-singing on the soundtrack, the only memorable one is the Oscar-nominated, “The Bare Necessities”, a catchy number that’s likely to get lost (and trapped) in the jungle of your brain. Final animated feature produced by Walt Disney—he was personally involved in its development, but passed away the year before the finished film’s release. A DisneyToons sequel splashed down sometime in the 2000s, a few of the animals were used for the early-90s TV series “TaleSpin”, and some character animation and even a couple of the animal personalities were later recycled for Disney’s Robin Hood (Baloo became Little John with Harris’ voice, the snake Kaa looks almost exactly like Sir Hiss, etc.).Kipling’s book inspired a live-action version from the studio in 1994, but it’s not a remake (and bears almost no resemblance to the original stories); an actual live-action remake from the company arrived in 2016…although there’s so much CGI, it hardly qualifies as “live-action”.

73/100