Something for the weekend. The Bare Necessities from The Jungle Book (1967). My Bride and I watched The Jungle Book (1967) earlier this week. It had been decades since I last watched it and I had forgotten just how immensely entertaining it was and is. The last film produced by Walt Disney before his death on December 15, 1966, ten days after his 65th birthday, Disney made no bones about the fact that the movie was to bear little relationship to Kipling’s masterpiece which Disney found to be somewhat dark. This was to be a fun Disney production with lots of singable tunes and endless merchandising opportunities. (His kindly Uncle Walt image was largely make believe, but Disney was a potent combination of artist and uber shrewd businessman.) The Jungle Book was the second most popular animated film released by Disney, and I recall how in ’67 families flocked to see it. The film is all about fatherhood, good and bad. In Bagheera we have responsible Dad who wants get man-cub to a village to save his life from the tiger Shere Khan. Baloo the Bear is fun loving Dad who teaches Mowgli about all the food, including tasty ants, that exist in the Jungle. The various surrogate Dads in the film ultimately save the man cub from the tiger. One wonders what Kipling would have made out of all this, but doubtless he would have cashed the Disney check, Kipling being one of the few professional writers who didn’t die broke and alcoholic.
Bonus:
That’s What Friends Are For. The three mop topped Vultures were originally supposed to be voiced by the Beatles, but, regrettably, Lennon nixed the idea.
Bonus 2:
Go here to take The Jungle Book quiz. I was Mowgli.
I’m also Mowgli. It was a nice movie. I remember seeing it in the late 60s at a drive-in, but I best remember seeing it in a theater in 1990 with my now wife just after we created the gift registry for our upcoming wedding.
Last of Disney’s genius. The rest, since, lost the art of innocence and love for less and less cerebral emphasis and here we are with whatever.
“including tasty aunts that exist in the Jungle”
Ummm….
Anyway, ironic because I was rereading the book for game the last fortnight.
Always like Shere Khan in it. They would later take Jungle Book and put the characters into a 1920s style pulp cartoon called Tale Spin for after school. It was a classic of my days.
https://youtu.be/rVTD-LtpW0M
Oops! Corrected. Bears are known on occasion to eat other bears.