Penned by Rudyard Kipling in 1894, The Jungle Book is a collection of stories revolving around an innocent boy raised by wolves in a jungle in India with various other animal characters becoming the major part of its story progression. Though the collection further deals with humans in the narration too, but the most famous among them all remain the stories of the jungle and the animals, specifically focusing on the kids, providing them entertainment as well as some essential lessons of life in a light, funny manner. In fact that is the reason these specific stories have been included in the school books too because of their mass appeal.
So the news of the makers going for a dark version of MOWGLI - which was not for the kids, didn’t make any sense for me to be honest as I simply couldn’t get how can I tell the kids that there is a new film titled MOWGLI - but that is not for you!.
Moreover, even on conceptual basis I failed to visualize the makers assuming a young couple or a group of young friends going for ‘A Jungle Book film’ knowing that this is no fun loving, entertaining movie but a humour-less, dark version of the famous tale. Plus, I couldn’t even imagine families going for it taking along the kids but also telling them that this Jungle Book is not for you but the grown-ups. To be specific, I couldn’t understand who was supposed to be the target audience of such dark, experimental film based on Jungle Books stories if not the young and the kids. May be the makers later realized this logical contradiction and instead of releasing it in the theaters, the film was sold to Netflix to be released on their online portal.
Anyway, since I had no idea how to explain this ‘Mowgli - not for them’ to the kids, they still started watching it with great excitement and then got hugely disappointed witnessing an unexpectedly strange and uncool version even having bloodshed and violence.
The film begins in the usual manner of a baby being found by the animals in jungle but has no lighter tone right from the first scene itself, which remained a big surprise for the kids as well as myself representing the mature audience. As a result they all gave their verdict of rejection in the first 15 minutes itself and started doing some other side-activities losing their interest in the film. And then taking advantage of the unavoidable scary feature of online portals or home watching, they just went out of the room leaving it after 30 minutes or so, considering it not for them at all or not their kind of Jungle book story.
Yes, the film was certainly not for them as clearly stated by the makers in their online promotion. But it frankly couldn’t keep me engaged too offering something out of the box or experimental using the familiar characters. As a dark, intense take on the theme, both in terms of tone and picture quality on screen, this MOWGLI failed to drag me in and I really missed the love and warmth of its so adorable characters known since long. Besides, I didn’t find any particular sequence to be either outstanding in execution or content beyond expectations giving you something extraordinary to praise.
Hence where the film failed for the kids, it certainly didn’t work for me as an adult too and I would surely not like to recommend it, not even as a different kind of an off-beat experimental attempt - may be more faithfully representing the cult characters.
Having said that, MOWGLI still can be seen if you are seriously interested in only the craft of motion capture technique, the cinematography, art-direction, some stunning visuals, the young performer, interesting voice-overs by all known artists and a fresh take on ‘The Jungle Book’ quite different from what we have been fondly living with since the early childhood.
However, at the same time I really hope and pray, they next don’t go for a dark, unrequired version of Tom & Jerry.
Ratings : 1+1 / 5 (with the additional one just for its worth noticing technical features)
