While many people are familiar with the live-action Jungle Book movie that Disney put out a few years back. Not many people know that Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, released in 1994 was actually distributed by Disney in many parts of the world! This is a very interesting take on the classic story and I watched it for the first time in years over the weekend and was surprised at how good it still was.
How to Download Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1994)
You can download or stream the film from a digital platform. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice. Check out also Disney animated The Jungle Book 2.
The Movie Review
To start with, they have a great cast here. Jason Scott Lee as Mowgli is great as is his love interest, Kitty played by Lena Headly, we also have Carey Elwes as our villain and he is awesome too. It is a stacked cast, but you may be wondering who voices characters like Baloo, Shere Khan, and Bagheera. Well, the animals do not talk, but they make it actually work and they still are important parts of the story and have personalities.
If you come into this expecting a retelling of the classic Disney Jungle Book, you are in for a surprise. To be honest, I have never read any of the original Jungle Book novels so I cannot say for sure how faithful it is to those. However, this is a fantastic version of the classic tale and it had me hooked from the start.
It starts in India back in 1887 and we get a fantastic back story for Mowgli. Mowgli is only five when the movie starts and his mother is a guide leading these soldiers through the jungle. He makes friends with a little girl called Kitty who is the daughter of one of the people on this trek through the jungle. Well, these are some bad people and they start killing animals for sport! This makes Shere Khan the ruler of the jungle furious so he kills them and Mowgli ends up lost in the jungle.
Mowgli along with his little wolf cub buddy, Grey Brother is taken by Bagheera to the wolves who raise Mowgli as one of their own. The movie then jumps forward many years and we see Mowgli living in the jungle as a man. The scene with Mowgli, Kaa, King Loui, and the whole monkey ruins is incredible and the highlight of the movie for me.
Eventually, Mowgli comes back into contact with humans and they find out that there is this hidden city of treasure (King Louis’s domain) and they want Mowgli to lead them there. There is also a bit of a love story here as Kitty is still here and she is involved with the villain of the movie.
This is just a great story, a story about a man wanting to pillage nature for his own gain. Mowgli standing up and being one with the jungle is awesome stuff. I love the way that Shere Khan is portrayed in this movie as he is not just a straight-up vicious villain like he is in the animated movie.
I am sure that it would be so easy to overlook this, but you are really missing out. I was surprised at just how well this held up and it is different enough from the classic and the modern remake that it stands as its own movie. If you are looking for a good movie from the 90s to watch, I recommend that you check this one out.
