Favorite Fridays: The Jungle Book (1967)

True confessions of a movie nerd: The Jungle Book is my favorite Disney film. Period. The only one that comes close to it is Beauty and the Beast (1991) and, as much as I dig that one, it takes second place. I grew up on The Jungle Book, seeing it in theaters when Disney still re-issued their classics. I had a book and record set of it, which was the story and the soundtrack. It's the only Disney outside of Beauty and the Beast that I've owned on VHS, DVD, and Blu Ray. So yeah, I still dig it.

The Jungle Book, of course, is the story of Mowgli, a young boy found by Bagheera the panther and raised by wolves. When Mowgli turns 10 it is learned that Shere Khan the tiger has returned and is seeking to kill Mowgli before he can grow up. Bagheera is tasked with taking the young boy to a Man Village despite the youngster's desire to stay in the jungle. Along the way, Mowgli encounters lovable goof Baloo the bear, is brought before King Louie, and finally comes face to face with his nemesis.

The Jungle Book is the first real all-star Disney movie. Sebastian Cabot, arguably best remembered for the TV show Family Affair, voices Bagheera. Comedian Phil Harris, who was in the John Wayne airplane disaster thriller The High and The Mighty as well as the 1956 Bing Crosby musical Anything Goes, plays Baloo. The voice of Winnie the Pooh, Sterling Holloway, does the Python who has coil trouble, Kaa. Character actor George Sanders is the villainous Shere Kahn. Sanders had done everything from The Saint to Hitchcock. With his inimitably smooth voice, he's the arguably the best Disney villain ever. J. Pat O'Malley, who appeared on basically ever TV show back in the day and did quite a few other Disney movies, is Colonel Hathi, the pompous elephant leading a weary pack on an eternal march through the jungle.

Then there's Louis Prima. Prima may be the best recognized member of the cast today. His version of Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody--he was the first singer to combine the songs--is a classic. Here he plays King Louie and gets the showstopper song, I Wanna Be Like You. It's the most memorable scene in the entire movie. Oh, sure, The Bare Necessities was nominated for an Oscar, but frankly I always preferred Louie's song.

Interestingly, it is director Wolfgang Reitherman's son Bruce who does the voice of Mowgli. He got the part after the original actor's voice broke during the 3 year filming period.

Part of what makes this work is the fact that the actors aren't just doing voices as the characters. All of the characters in the film take on traits of those actors. Shere Khan is pretty much what you would get from George Sanders as a villain, only animated. And Louis Prima's habit of marching around with his band during a performance is full blown used by King Louie in this.  On top of that, all the characters resemble their voice actors if you pay close enough attention. Interestingly, the original idea was to have The Beatles do the vultures at the end of the film. That's why the vultures resemble the Fab Four. However, legend has it that John Lennon vetoed the idea.

It is well established that The Jungle Book was the last animated film Walt Disney was personally involved in. As such, it is his crowning achievement. 30 years after his (and the world's) first full length animated movie, Disney capped his career off with a breezy, entertaining 80 minutes that might have deviated wildly from Kipling's novel, but did so with style. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Let's start with the answer to the question on everyone's mind: yes, Star Wars The Force Awakens is a good movie. It is, in fact, the movie you've been looking for. As someone who didn't especially hate the Prequel Trilogy, I do have to admit that this one spanks those three and puts them in a corner shame facedly.

It's 30 years after Return of the Jedi. The Galactic Empire has given way to the equally evil First Order and the Rebel Alliance has become the Resistance. Worse yet, Luke Skywalker has disappeared and everyone wants to find him. The bad guys so that the last of the Jedi can be destroyed and the good guys so they can get his help.

Enter into this  X-Wing pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Issacs). He gets a map to Luke's location and hides it with his droid before being captured. Ex-Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) helps him escape and the droid itself is found by beautiful scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley). Rey and Finn team up with a couple of familiar faces to get the droid back to the Resistance, fighting back the First Order and Big Bad Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) every step of the way.

That's all I'm saying about the plot. To say more would ruin the fun and surprises of the movie and that would be criminal.

The three new leads are all appealing, especially Ridley and Boyega. They get the bulk of the movie's screen time and deservedly so since this is really their journey as heroes. They are this generation's Han and Leia. She's scrappy and resourceful, he's the reluctant hero who manages to come through in a pinch. They're terrific and welcome additions to the mythology.

Speaking of which, yes, the original trio of heroes are here. Harrison Ford slips back into the role of Han Solo in a way that suggests he never left it. Certainly he does better here than in his last Indiana Jones film. Carrie Fisher acquits herself nicely as an older and battle weary General Leia Organa.Other favorites such as Peter Mayhew's Chewbacca and Anthony Daniels' C-3PO likewise show up. They're always welcome to see and they blend seamlessly with the new cast. Ford, in particular, has great chemistry with the newcomers.

This thing zips along, nicely balancing character, humor, and action. One of the things the movie does right is not overstuffing the action at the expense of character development. We get to know everyone in the movie, which better helps us to invest in them and care what happens. The action is as spectacular as ever, but it's not overdone. Some movies have so much action that your eyes tend to glaze over after a while and you wait for something meaningful to happen. This one finds the right balance. As for the humor, it's a merciful return to the wit and dialogue of the originals and not the toilet humor of the Prequels. 

The movie is filled with nods and throwbacks to the Original Trilogy. Some may argue that the film is essentially a beat for beat remake of Star Wars or a Star Wars Greatest Hits collection, but despite that it works in a way the Prequel Trilogy couldn't.  Just like Jurassic World, this movie understands what we want out of Star Wars and gives it to us on a grand scale. It actually feels like Star Wars. The biggest knock on the Prequel Trilogy is that it doesn't seem to be part of the same series as Original Trilogy. This does.  Best of all, it does the one thing that a Star Wars movie should do: it makes us want to see the next film in the series. 

The only bad thing about all this is that Disney didn't see fit to release the 3D version on Blu Ray yet. The 3D version has one of the most crackerjack gimmick shots of all time--a Star Destroyer poking out into the audience. That shot alone makes it worth seeing in the 3rd Dimension. It is possible that Disney will still release a 3D Blu Ray--they claim they will--but for now fans will have to deal with just plain old 2D.

That said,  if you have not already, see this movie you must. Like it, you will.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road Part II: The Rainbow Road To Oz

This is the story of the Oz movie that was never made. It is the story of a movie that could have changed movie history but was doomed from the start. It is the story of The Rainbow Road To Oz.

In the mid 1930s Walt Disney started looking for a follow up to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A lifelong fan of the Baum books, he tried to get his brother Roy to obtain the rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to do as an animated film. But MGM had just bought the rights, deciding to do the film ironically enough due to the success of Snow White.

It took until 1954 for Disney to get the film rights to the Oz books. He ended up with the rights to 12 of the books, including The Patchwork Girl of Oz which became the first Oz project he decided on. Apparently the initial plan was to do it as a two part episode of the Disneyland TV show. TV writer Dorothy Cooper was hired to adapt the book. But when she finally turned in her script, Disney was so impressed with it he decided to do it as a feature film instead. Bill Walsh, producer of The Mickey Mouse Club, was given the job of Producer and Sidney Miller was slated for Director. As for the cast, it was decided that the Mouseketeers would play the characters. As a test, a ten minute segment was to be performed on September 11, 1957 on the fourth season opening of Disneyland. The segment would consist of a couple of the proposed numbers from the film and the kids in costume.

The episode, which is on DVD, starts with Disney explaining the history of the filming of Peter and the Wolf, followed by a showing of the short itself. Afterwards, as Walt is about to introduce a segment from Fantasia, Cubby O'Brien and a couple of the other kids invade his office and drag him off to the Mouseketeer Stage. There they celebrate the third anniversary of the opening of the Disneyland theme park by singing songs extolling the park's greatness. Then they hand him the script for The Rainbow Road To Oz and try pitching the film to him with them in the parts. Yes, the conceit of the segment was that they pitch it to Disney when in reality, he had been behind the idea the whole time.

After showing him sketches of the Scarecrow and the Patchwork Girl, Doreen Tracey (as the Patchwork Girl) and Bobby Burgess (in full Scarecrow makeup) do a number called "Patches". As a number, it's vaguely okay. Nothing particularly memorable, but nothing mind numbingly repulsive either. But Doreen and Bobby sing it well and actually look pretty great. It's a shame the footage is in black and white because I would have looked to have seen what the Patchwork Girl looked like in full color.  Unfortunately, the choreography comes off as fairly bland and Bobby himself is no Ray Bolger. That may not sound very fair to Bobby, but he sort of tries to do a little bit of Bolger's shtick but doesn't go as far with it as he perhaps should.

After the number is done, a couple of more sketches are shown, mostly notably of Ozma, to be played by Annette Funicello. What follows is an odd musical number called The Oz-Kan Hop. Let me put it this way: it's no Over The Rainbow. Come to it, it may not be as good as The Lollipop Guild number. Consider that for a moment. How bad does a song have to be to be not as good as one of the most hated sequences of the 1939 film? Pretty bad.

Darlene Gillepsie (who has been making most of the pitch to Disney during the skit) gets to play Dorothy and she looks okay in the part and really puts some enthusiasm into it. I actually wonder how she would have fared if the movie had gotten made. Annette looks fine as Ozma but doesn't do much in the sequence but stand around and look pretty. Overall, the choreography is better than in the "Patches" sequence, but the number is so bad that tends to cancel out the good will.

When this number is over, Walt tells the kids that he gives in and they'll get to do the picture. In response, the cast sings the best number yet, The Rainbow Road To Oz, in front of and on top of a giant prop cake. It is the one number that almost could have justified the whole project.

After the show, however, Disney backed off of the movie. To this day, nobody knows for certain, though at least three theories have been put forward. One has it that Walt thought the Mouseketeers couldn't sustain an entire feature film. Sure, they were on TV five days a week and had appeared in a 3D short for the Disneyland theme park, but a multi-million dollar film? That's a bit of a gamble that Walt might not have been prepared to take.

The second theory suggests that as he watched the sketches, he had a feeling that the songs weren't as strong as the ones in the original film. Truth to tell, they really aren't. Hand in hand with this is the fact that Bill Walsh apparently rewrote Cooper's screenplay to Disney's dissatisfaction.

The third and final theory has to do with CBS airing the 1939 movie on a yearly basis. They had just started in 1956 and it is believed that Disney didn't want or think he could compete with that. Personally, I suspect it's a combination of all three myself.

Disney turned to another fantasy property, a version of Victor Herbert's Babes In Toyland, for his first foray into live action musicals. This film had Annette as Mary Mary Quite Contrary and, in what seems to be a nod to Oz, Ray Bolger as the villainous Barnaby. Ironically, this film gets compared from time to time with the 1934 version that had Laurel and Hardy. And not positively compared at that.

It would take 28 years after the Disneyland broadcast for Walt Disney Studios to finally get an Oz project on the big screen. When they did, it was quite different from the one Uncle Walt had in mind.