 The Jungle Book 2, which reportedly was originally intended as a direct-to-video project, is getting so-so reviews as a theatrical feature. Produced at DisneyToon Studios in Australia, the film lacks much of the detailed animation produced at Disney's Burbank headquarters, something that several critics take note of in their reviews. "To release this film theatrically is a compromise of [Disney's] traditions and standards," comments Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. To Dave Kehr in the New York Times, the film is merely a recycling of memorable moments from the 1967 original, rendered "in a cheap, thin style of animation far closer to Saturday-morning television than to the classic Disney features." Lou Lumenick in the New York Post calls it "a by-the-numbers rehash that will leave anyone much over 5 enormously grateful that, if you duck out before the lengthy end credits, it lasts just over an hour." But several critics remark that the film is likely to keep the little ones content. "It's a perfectly acceptable short-term baby-sitter," Elizabeth Weitzman writes in the New York Daily News. Ty Burr in the Boston Globe clearly detests the movie but includes a "service area" in his review, which may be a kind of "bottom line" for parents: "If you have a kid or three at home, and you're desperate to get them out of the house, over the tundra, and into a movie theater, The Jungle Book 2 is dandy diversionary fare. It moves fast, the characters are cute, the colors are pretty, and it's not too scary." And Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times, who has become the chief contrarian among major movie reviewers -- mostly what they like, he doesn't; what they don't, he does -- praises the film as "a work of such charm and imagination it should enchant, as the old circus phrase goes, 'children of all ages.'" |
