Checked out the new Netflix original Mowgli, based on the Jungle Book stories. This film was in production at the same time as the recent Disney “live action” Jungle Book but got delayed when that movie did well. I guess it got delayed right out of being a theatrical release and went right to Netflix.

I read the first set of Jungle Book short stories but I don’t remember anything well enough to say how much this new movie follows them. But it doesn’t follow the plot – though it has all the characters – of the Disney variant. Not that it matters a lot – it’s about boy who is raised by wolves (and panthers and bears) in the jungles of India, faces down against an evil tiger (and hyena) and monkeys and a giant snake.

The first thing I should say about this flick is that it’s violent, bloody, and dark. Now, that’s not a criticism so much as it’s a warning… this isn’t the bright sparkly Jungle Book animated film or even the slightly darker Disney remake. This has brutality and blood… not splatter and it’d probably manage a PG-13 just fine. But still, it wasn’t expected and, honestly, not wholly unwelcome.

Unfortunately, the movie is otherwise kind of terrible. I’ll start with acting… and I have to be mean to a little boy actor but the kid playing Mowgli is just not very good. Mainly when he gets into strong emotions like sadness or anger… he has a weird face (now I’m just being a jerk) and that’s not his fault but its distracting and unconvincing when he tries to show these deeper emotions. But also the voice cast for the animals is really impressive – Christian Bale, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchette, Andy Serkis, Naomie Harris, and more – but they were either directed to growl every line or they had their voices adjusted in editing to be unrecognizably them.

But that hardly mattered because the CGI animals were just terrible. Just ugly, unnatural, uncomfortable, and all around unsettling. Now, hey, not all CGI animals are great in all movies but when 95% of your movie is fake animals talking and acting and you can’t get that right, that impacts the entire film. The weird thing is, any individual shot might look ok… it’s not like these CGI models look like they are from the 1990s… they look technically advanced. But they don’t look natural… there’s a deep uncanny valley problem here. They look shockingly ugly and off-putting, with soulless eyes and sometimes not even like real animals (and I’m not talking about them speaking or the lip animation not being natural because that goes with the show). Balloo the bear occasionally didn’t look bear-like, sometimes wolves legs are far too long, the monkeys were hideous, and a white wolf pup just looked gross.

I don’t know… I think if you can get past the bad CGI animals, you might like the movie. But I also found it a little long and the dramatic finale a bit confused and overly complicated with Mowgli facing Sheer Khan, elephants, the hunter from the village, etc. But, in the long run, they needed to nail what Disney got so right… which is weird since Andy Serkis is the mo-cap guy and champions the art form. Something went very wrong and maybe that’s why it’s a Netflix original. Sad.

Score: 62