Tarzan
I generally see movies on Monday night, when I am more likely to share the theatre with a few like-minded weekend stragglers. More elbow room, no lines - good fun for all. But knowing that the audience you see a movie with can alter your opinion of it, (try watching 9 ½ Weeks with your parents) it seemed appropriate to catch a Sunday matinee of Tarzan. Surrounded by a teeming horde of families with 5 year olds in tow is the only way to see a Disney film, and probably the only way you will see it - kids flock to Disney like mosquitoes to a bug zapper, and for good reason. Like McDonald's, you know exactly what to expect when you step up to the counter to order your meal.
Given the success of The Lion King, Disney was primed for another film based around the jungle and its inhabitants, and although Tarzan isn't nearly the classic that Jungle Book is (and bears some resemblance to), judging from the response from the kids around me, it's a qualified winner. Unlike recent blockbusters like Aladdin, Mulan or Beauty and the Beast, though, Tarzan is directed squarely at kids. While predictably light entertainment for you parents, there are few flashes of adult comedy, issues or even dangerous villains to detract from its breezy tone. If there were a rating lighter than "G", Tarzan would get it.
You know the story already - raised by gorillas in the mist, Tarzan struggles with his role as an outsider, and becomes the leader of the pack by being the smartest and strongest ape-man around. The opening sequences which show the orphan learning the ropes (or vines, if you will) are the film's best, and then Tarzan settles into a less ambitious tale. A trio of explorers arrive at the island, one of whom (Jane) naturally is the same hot chick who is in every Disney movie, and Tarzan feels a twinge of recognition from beneath his loincloth when he rescues her from a marauding band of baboons. (I'm making this sound more salacious than it actually is - I was inventing a Jungle Love sub plot independently of the movie to entertain myself.) He then has to choose between joining a life with his birth race or his adoptive family.
The rescue scene, and other action scenes like it, is visually impressive - Tarzan swings wildly around the jungle canopy and rides mossy tree limbs like a crack skateboarder. I'm told that the illustrators actually studied skateboarders to get these moves down, and Tarzan certainly gets more air off an elephant's back than any halfpipe would allow. Whizzing, plummeting and other dizzy "camera" angles are used to great effect during the rescue, though somehow Jane's skirt never blows up over her taut British thighs. (Sorry, there I go again.)
Tarzan didn't really blow my skirt up either, though I enjoyed his neurotic elephant buddy ("Are you sure this pool is sanitary?") and the lush animation of the African jungle. His tentative relationship with Jane is all sweetness and light, and his interaction with the jungle animals is every kid's Dr. Doolittle fantasy. Tarzan also gets Major Props for not being a musical, although sickly new age pop courtesy of Phil Collins is integrated throughout. I can't imagine that his incongruous score will show up at Oscar time, but then, I expected Elton John to get laughed offstage for that endlessly grating "Can You Feel The Love Tonight".
But I digress, bitterly. Tarzan is easy on the eyes and even easier on the brain, and while I missed a tasty villain, is the first Disney movie in a long while that won't give kids nightmares. Still - while the absence of a strong love story or scary monsters may make the movie better for the under-5 crowd, its emotional blandness also provokes less passion. While the kids will like this one, I'd be very surprised if it inspires the same kind of obsessive viewing and toy purchasing that The Little Mermaid and The Lion King did.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998, 1999 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker