Life of a Salesman (along with a return to another kind of jungle)
Reviews by Ken Burke
Take care, curious readers, for plot spoilers gallop rampantly throughout the Two Guys’ insightful reviews. Therefore, be warned, beware, and read on when you’re ready to be transported to … wherever we end up. Please protect your eyes from the dazzling brilliance.
A Hologram for the King (Tom Tykwer)
A beleaguered IT salesman, Alan Clay, goes to Saudi Arabia to sell the king on a holographic presentation system for the new, sprawling city being built where the sand meets the sea, but problems recur when his contact keeps failing to show up, the contact’s assistant just wants to drink and have sex, and Alan’s daughter back home needs college tuition money.
What Happens: Some years ago, Alan Clay was a vice-president with Schwinn bicycles, one of the oldest, most-loved-producers in America of this hallowed transportation device. Then the competition started cutting significantly into their profits so the company began outsourcing their manufacturing to China in an attempt to cut costs (laying off hundreds of American workers in the process, a memory Alan’s father [Tom Skerritt] refuses to let him forget—as if it doesn’t still haunt him enough already as shown in a couple of flashback shots), only to find that the Chinese starting making their own versions of these bikes which practically put Schwinn out of business (my research shows this information to be largely true, with the clarification that the company was ultimately acquired by Canadian conglomerate Dorel Industries after declaring bankruptcy in 1992; however, the time placement for this story is set a few years back from now [one source says 2010 but I recall nothing in the film that verifies that; however, it’s based on Dave Eggers’ 2012 novel of the same name set in 2010 so this is likely the case] because we see TV news of the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge being built in China as a contemporary event even though this mammoth structure’s [now recognized as a compromised construction, considerably worrying those of us who drive over it] been in operation since 2013). Since that time, Bostonian Alan’s struggled to find his former level of success both professionally and personally, in that he’s gone through a bitter divorce, now can’t afford his daughter Kit’s (Tracey Fairaway) college tuition (she’s on his side concerning Mom’s nastiness, though, as well as not minding waitressing for a couple of semesters in order to build up some cash while Dad gets better set back on his feet).
It’s clear that Alan’s current job with Reyland Industries is on the line as well, as he’s heading a team sent to Saudi Arabia to convince the king to purchase Reyland’s IT system (featuring sophisticated holographic capabilities) for the monarch's very-much-still-barely-in-construction-Metropolis of Economy and Trade being built on the Red Sea shore (with nothing but barren desert around it, nicely emphasizing Alan’s “fish-out-of-water” status in a place where workers uselessly sweep sand off of roads and signs in this monolithic culture proclaim “Lifestyle Diversity” for the emerging city) somewhere near Jeddah. Despite Alan’s boss’ constantly-demanding-phone-calls, though, no progress at all is happening with the sale—or even the much-needed sales pitch.
For starters, there’s only one building somewhat finished at this new site, so despite a large, clean, sparsely-filled lobby (the very-nice-but-basically-useless-receptionist sits at a desk surrounded by vastly-empty-space) and a beautifully-furnished-office on the difficult-to-access-5th floor there’s not much information nor help to be found here, with the further problem that Alan’s team (already there when he arrives) isn’t even in that main building but instead is in a large nearby tent where power, WI-FI, food, and even air-conditioning are in sporadic supply, preventing them from even being marginally ready for the king, whenever he might show up (a question with nothing but obtuse answers from anyone that Alan asks). For that matter, Alan’s assigned contact isn’t there when he’s supposed to be either, nor does he show up (as promised) on either of the next 2 days (a friend of mine worked some years ago in hospital administration in Jeddah; he assured me that this type of confusion and obfuscation was, sadly for him, a part of business as usual in this culture; I don’t mean to further inflame anti-Muslim-sentiments which are already getting out of control in the U.S. at this point, but I—like Alan—can see how this sort of undependability is crazy-making for Western capitalists [maybe not so much for Alan’s Chinese competitors, whose odd form of mercantile-Communism now results in Beijing sporting the most billionaires of any city on Earth], especially when they need every little advantage possible to make a positive impression) so Alan finally sneaks up to a higher floor where he finds Hanne (Sidse Babett Knudsen), the Danish assistant to his mystery-contact-man; she can’t aid him with logistics but does provide some whiskey hidden in an olive-oil-bottle which at least helps Alan ease his frustrations in a country where alcohol is officially forbidden but seems easily available for those in the know, both foreigners and Saudis (my friend verified that also; drinking easily takes place in foreigners’ compounds and embassies—such as the Danish one where Hanne invites Alan for a party [that's much wilder than he anticipated, with her being much more available for sex than he assumed, an offer he graciously refuses, but he never gets a chance to reconsider because the next time he barges up to her floor her whole team has been sent somewhere else]).
It’s likely that Alan has this sales opportunity only because he met the king’s nephew in some large public restroom some years ago (Alan’s a constantly affable guy, always beginning a conversation with the “Where are you from?” question), but his lack of progress (or hopeless attempts to even find out what to do next) has led to draining as much of that cheap booze as he can hold, resulting in constant oversleeping, missing the daily shuttle from his swanky Jeddah hotel out to the hoped for-presentation-site, followed by regular calls to the driver he located on his 1st-overslept-day (jet lag that time)—a very interesting guy named Yousef (Alexander Black) who gives him much more accurate, skeptical insights on what’s going on around them, even allows Alan to accompany him to his home village in the hills outside the city in order to escape a jealous husband who’s angry that Yousef’s been romancing his wife (no sex, the driver assures Alan, but here even such flirtation could easily result in death)—to keep returning to the slowly-emerging Metropolis (being built by imported Filipinos because Saudis have a wealthy-enough-economy so that their people don’t do such manual work) in hopes of making any progress toward that prized sale. Finally, he does accidently meet his long-delayed-contact (even though the receptionist said the guy was in NYC) after barging upstairs again, resulting in agreements to fix all of Alan's logistical problems although it’s still not clear when the king might show up. Before that can be worked out, though, Alan finds himself with another crisis when he attempts to lance a large growth on his back resulting in a lot of bleeding overnight, leading Yousef to insist they visit the local (highly-sophisticated) hospital where he’s treated by Dr. Zahra Hakem (Sarita Choudhury*)—a shock to Yousef that Alan met alone with a female physician (even the fact that she’s a doctor is a further shock to this Saudi man)—then later finishes off that whiskey only to become sick and delirious so he’s brought again to the hospital where she surmises that the combination of cheap booze (she says there’s better stuff available in Jeddah) and a bad anxiety attack has created his self-imposed-physical-crisis (soon resolved).
* Not the 1st time she’s starred in an intercultural romance story (hold on, I’m getting to that part; see, I even put spoilers in the spoilers) as in her younger, equally-attractive-days she played a young Indian woman becoming connected to Denzel Washington’s character in Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair, 1991). Maybe her character in A Hologram …’s supposed to be South Asian as well, possibly accounting for her ongoing-defiance (within limits) of Saudi customs and restrictions.
A bit later Alan returns to the hospital to have the pre-cancerous-cyst on his back removed but finds a male doctor assigned to do the procedure which is interrupted by Zahra who has harsh words (in Arabic) with her male colleague, then sends him away to do the operation herself. In the process of conversations between Alan and Zahra, we find that she’s in the process of divorcing her husband, that she will tolerate the restrictions on women in her society as she must but doesn’t support them (director Tykwer's interview far below in the links for this film notes that such semi-independent women aren’t as fictional in Saudi Arabia as we might think—especially now, as a few female-freedoms are starting to emerge [including voting and running for office, although still not allowed to drive—so that this character’s not as impossible as Western understanding might indicate, despite Yousef’s being incredulous about her unusual self-sufficiency, which might have been more scandalous in 2010), and that there’s a mutual attraction between her and Alan. She even arranges for him to visit her marvelous seaside home (obviously the husband’s no longer there) where they do some scuba diving (although she has to be topless while they’re face-down in the water so that anyone noticing them will think it’s 2 men without calling the morality police [no joke] on them). Finally, the big day swings into place unannounced so that Alan’s team meets the king as he comes to the large tent to be impressed by their hurriedly-put-into-place-presentation; however, they don’t end up in 1st place to seal the deal because a group from China (where else?) is able to offer the same technology at ½ the price. This doesn’t mean disaster for Alan, though, because somehow he gets a well-paying-job in Jeddah which allows him to continue developing his relationship with Zahra while now having enough income to get Kit back into her college classes.*
* Again echoing what I learned from my friend about his work in both Saudi Arabia and Qatar that there are numerous professional opportunities for Westerners there, with generous wages, housing allowances, and vacation options to tour nearby regions of the globe so it can result in attractive offers if you’re willing to accept the fierce religious environment that dominates all public activity, doing what you will as long as it’s quietly performed in private (a female academic colleague of mine also took up a similar offer in the United Arab Emirates a few years back to teach in an all-women’s-college, again because of the income and extensive support being offered despite similar [but not quite so harsh] public restrictions on women’s freedoms in this Saudi-neighboring-Islamic-culture).
So What? In that I’ve already worked in a good bit of what would fill this section of my review with parenthetical comments I’ve made in the section above, I find the only things left to note here are just those that have already been emphasized in other reviews that I’ve read but are still too dominant for me not to mention: (1) The great marvelously-stunning-opening-scene where Hanks is singing the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” about realizing “This is not my beautiful house” and “This is not my beautiful wife” as those background images go up in puffs of purple smoke behind him before the location changes to him on a roller coaster followed by his actual presence in an airplane cabin when he wakes up from this dream surrounded by Muslim men saying group prayers as he realizes that “you may find yourself in another part of the world” (more on this in the next section below), and (2) the thematic (if not plot-detail) resemblance between A Hologram … and Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003) where not 1 but 2 fish-out-of-their-normal-water (but still well-supplied with whiskey)-Americans are in a high-rise-hotel in a distinctly-foreign-culture-city (Tokyo in that case) trying to make sense of lives that seem to be spinning out of control through little fault of their own. Especially young Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) more so than older Bob (Bill Murray—a bit more on these actors in the review below where they provide voices for jungle animals in yet-another-non-Western-culture, although I guess that jungles may be pretty much the same worldwide with just different dynamics among the local species) because in her case she doesn’t have much concept of why her marriage is already deteriorating (as her newlywed-husband’s away on photo shoots all the time, even though he brought her along on the Tokyo job) while Bob’s a noted movie star who would seemingly be much more in command of whatever’s not jelling properly in his life; Alan’s more like Charlotte as forces are in motion around him that he’s struggling to get a firm grip on.*
* There were some complaints that the Japanese characters in Lost in Translation were treated as mere silly stereotypes while other reviews said just the opposite, that Coppola was portraying them as an American tourist (which both of her lead characters were) would superficially understand them. Similarly, some might find the portrayals of many of the Saudis in A Hologram for the King to be stereotypes as well, a decision I will leave to those who know this society’s culture better than I do; however, based on what we learn from Yousef and the business contacts that poor Alan eventually makes I’d say that we get a reasonable spectrum of presentations, especially in a land where public executions are seen as some form of entertainment and no one in charge of those who are actually in charge of the country seems to know what to expect from one day to the next (at least as I interpret what I read in the news about international relations between the Saudi monarchy and the U.S. government). Further regarding demeaning stereotypes, often these representations in media presented as commentary or satire are wrongly interpreted as ridicule, leaving decisive understanding in the mind of the beholder without awareness of creative intentions.
On a more objective negative side of this film, I'll agree that some scenes in A Hologram ... have pacing that seems a little odd in that they end with another confounding situation of abrupt confusion and/or desperation for Alan so the camera just lingers on his tensely-befuddled-face, but this is all properly in keeping with a man who outwardly exudes charm, extreme confidence, and control but internally is aware that his life has never been properly on track since the Schwinn debacle, his future’s hanging by a thread if this huge sale isn’t completed (while Saudi circumstances obliviously-conspire against him just as he keeps messing up his own aura of invincibility by oversleeping every day for various reasons). Bob’s determined to not end up like the pathetic, beaten Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman (written by Arthur Miller for Broadway in 1949; made into a film several times with the one that still haunts me the TV movie from 1985, directed by Volker Schlöndorff, starring Dustin Hoffman) but realizes constantly (in the words of initial-song “Once in a Lifetime”) “Well … How did I get here? […] After the money’s gone.” While we see no illustrations on screen of what’s going on in Alan’s mind as we did in the opening partial-music-video we see in that still, stunned face the terror he keeps hidden (and tries to drown with the cut-rate-whiskey) so as to not allow his team members nor his daughter to realize how close to failure he is, how he’s teetering above the abyss holding on for dear life.
Bottom Line Final Comments: I must admit that sometimes
I’m stunned about the gap between my own reactions to a film vs. the critical consensus to be found at sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic; in the case of A Hologram … I’m way off from them with my 4 stars (the highest honor I normally give, as I’m very stingy with those top 5’s) compared to their low, respective 62% of positive ratings, 59% average of scores, all of which just goes to show how much better a critic I am than all of these more-well-known guys and gals, a burden they’ll just have to bear. All I can say further (believe it or not, although I am about out of ammo here) is while praise for Hanks’ performance has been uniformly high there are plenty of complaints including that the story surrounding him is mediocre, characters have too-frequent a habit of simply disappearing, the ending is too sentimentally easy, etc. To this I say some of it may be due to adherence to the source novel (I haven’t read it nor have I yet found a detailed summary, but one respected reviewer from the New York Times, in an extensive review in which he makes comparisons of Eggers to Norman Mailer, calls it “a clear, supremely readable parable of America in the global economy that is haunting, beautifully shaped and sad”), yet from what I’ve found about this book there seem to be notable changes that possibly director-screenwriter Tykwer needs to be held accountable for in his narrative; however, nothing of what I saw on screen hit me in any manner as mundane, flat, nor grasping for substance. (Although Alan does get a quick salvation for his middle-aging-life from a new, easily-found-love-relationship enhanced with a decently-paying-job but since when does mainstream artistry demand personal tragedies of Lomanesque-proportions in order to be effective?) As for the story’s disappearing characters, I see that as reflective of the ephemeral nature of the culture Alan’s now embedded in, where people and priorities shift like the desert sands as events evolve (especially Yousef who’s probably still hiding from that angry husband.
I’m stunned about the gap between my own reactions to a film vs. the critical consensus to be found at sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic; in the case of A Hologram … I’m way off from them with my 4 stars (the highest honor I normally give, as I’m very stingy with those top 5’s) compared to their low, respective 62% of positive ratings, 59% average of scores, all of which just goes to show how much better a critic I am than all of these more-well-known guys and gals, a burden they’ll just have to bear. All I can say further (believe it or not, although I am about out of ammo here) is while praise for Hanks’ performance has been uniformly high there are plenty of complaints including that the story surrounding him is mediocre, characters have too-frequent a habit of simply disappearing, the ending is too sentimentally easy, etc. To this I say some of it may be due to adherence to the source novel (I haven’t read it nor have I yet found a detailed summary, but one respected reviewer from the New York Times, in an extensive review in which he makes comparisons of Eggers to Norman Mailer, calls it “a clear, supremely readable parable of America in the global economy that is haunting, beautifully shaped and sad”), yet from what I’ve found about this book there seem to be notable changes that possibly director-screenwriter Tykwer needs to be held accountable for in his narrative; however, nothing of what I saw on screen hit me in any manner as mundane, flat, nor grasping for substance. (Although Alan does get a quick salvation for his middle-aging-life from a new, easily-found-love-relationship enhanced with a decently-paying-job but since when does mainstream artistry demand personal tragedies of Lomanesque-proportions in order to be effective?) As for the story’s disappearing characters, I see that as reflective of the ephemeral nature of the culture Alan’s now embedded in, where people and priorities shift like the desert sands as events evolve (especially Yousef who’s probably still hiding from that angry husband.
So, despite any other reviews, I remain quite pleased with what I saw in A Hologram for the King (storybook ending or not—and certainly not a traditional sappy fairytale storybook in that unless Alan and Zahra marry and/or move away from Saudi Arabia [not so likely on the latter, unless his new career makes for an easy carryover; possibly she’d be accepted with her professional medical credentials in another country but I’ve seen full-fledged-doctors from abroad put back to intern level when starting over in the U.S.] they’ll still have to live under the cultural radar of a most-repressive-environment in order to fully appreciate being with each other, but as some closing voiceover advice tells us, “There must be time” for the aspects of life that we demand to pursue), once again find Tom Hanks to be a superlative actor (who proudly hails from my marvelous transplanted home in the San Francisco East Bay), and take heart in connecting with a story where unfulfilled people find opportunities to better their situations by refusing to take “not today” for an answer. I'll return again to “Once in a Lifetime” (on the 1981 Remain in Light album), but this time as my official Musical Metaphor for this film, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98AJUj-qxHI because while Alan (and you) at times “may say to yourself My God! … What have I done?” you can also take solace that “Time isn’t holding us” so that if you’ll just “find yourself … Letting the days go by” that it’s all the “Same as it ever was,” which may be better than we previously realized as we move “Into the blue again."
(Can I convince you this next review belongs in) Short Takes (? Well, it’s shorter than the one for ... the King at least, but that evidence might not even hold up on the Judge Judy show.)
The Jungle Book [2016]* (Jon Favreau)
Mowgli, a human boy has been raised in the Indian jungles by wolves after losing his father to a tiger attack, with all being peaceful until the vicious tiger returns to this part of the wilderness to demand that the “man-cub” be returned to his own kind; Mowgli’s adventures intensify from there, as Disney remakes their animated classic with dazzling computer imagery.
* In case you're wondering why I note the 2016 release year when I normally don't for reviews written just when a movie comes out, it's because I'm planning for this blog to be read by untold future generations (when my reputation will be even bigger than it is now in France [no joke; latest Google statistics—for some unspecified time frame—show 1,071 unique hits from there vs. 688 from the U.S. {and several others from a wide selection of critically-discerning-countries}]) so I want them to know this review isn't about the 1967 Disney animated feature; isn't that thoughtful of me?
What Happens: In an unspecified time long ago, a man (Ritesh Rajan) and his baby son (Kendrick Reyes) venture into the jungles of India; that night they’re attacked by a fierce Bengal tiger, Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba; the rest of the cast here are all voice talents connected to fabulous Computer Generated Imagery [CGI] of the story’s animals), who kills the father but is scarred by a burning log from their campfire so he runs away, not knowing that the baby’s survived. About 10 years later we find that the boy was rescued by a kindly panther, Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), who gave him to a wolf pack run by Akela (Giancarlo Esposito) to be raised, but Mowgli (Neel Sethi) often irritates his animal elders by attempting tool-use-“tricks” that only humans can accomplish, not acting in the proper “man-cub/wolf way," where “The strength of the pack is the wolf, the strength of the wolf is the pack.” Each year, a prolonged dry spell occurs, with water resources becoming scarce; as the level drops in a well-known lake, a “Peace Rock” appears, reminding the jungle inhabitants of the common law that all may drink here without any hunting happening from the carnivores. One day, Shere Khan returns to this section of the jungle, smells Mowgli, declares that he’ll observe the law until the rains return, but then the boy must be sent back to the “man-village” or they’ll all pay a price for defying him (he also notes how dangerous humans are, with their “red flower”—fire—which often lays waste to the jungle habitat). When the rains come, the wolf pack debates whether Mowgli must leave (implying our well-known-human-reluctance to stand up to oppressors, after being asked by the tiger, “How many lives is a man-cub worth?”) until the boy ends the arguments by volunteering to leave so Bagheera’s in the process of taking him to the village when Shere Khan attacks; after a frantic chase, the boy manages to escape with a large stampeding herd of water buffalo, then falls into a river where he’s washed far from his home.
In his new surroundings, Mowgli’s hypnotized by a cunning python, Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), who also talks of the deadly-destructive “red flower,” tells the boy the story of his origin, then is about to eat him when he’s gladly rescued by big Baloo the bear (Bill Murray). Baloo demands that Mowgli help him get some honey off a high cliff in return for the bear’s action so the boy finally gets to use some engineering “tricks” to accomplish this feat (despite getting stung a bit in the process). Bagheera finally catches up with them, he and Mowgli argue about the boy staying with Baloo in the jungle, an opportunity arises for Mowgli to use his vine-ropes (that helped him get the honey) to pull a baby elephant out of a pit (earning him the respect of these true lords of the jungle), but Bagheera and Baloo sadly decide that Mowgli must go to the village or Shere Kahn will eventually find and kill him. Before they can move on, though, Mowgli’s captured by the monkey army of enormous King Louie (Christopher Walken) who reigns in an abandoned temple up on a mountainside—evoking images of Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) from Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), insisting that Mowgli must help him command fire so that he can rule the entire jungle (he looks big enough to battle an elephant as it is, but I guess when you’re ambitious you can never have enough “fire”power)—in an ironic twist on the Greek myth of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods for the benefit of mankind. Bagheera and Baloo climb up the cliff (very difficult for the bear), then create a distraction so that Mowgli can escape; in the ensuring chaos, part of the temple collapses on Louie, allowing our heroes to depart, but Louie’s told Mowgli that Shere Kahn visited the wolf pack demanding the return of the boy after
which he killed Akela to emphasize his power. Mowgli wants revenge so he slips into the village at night, steals a torch, and runs back into the jungle (however, sparks ignite the brush starting an inferno, just as the tiger had warned as this movie’s message gets a bit more complicated); all of the animals gather at the Peace Lake for their protection, Mowgli joins them as does Shere Khan who tells the boy he’s created the disaster that humans always cause so Mowgli throws the torch into the lake then runs into the burning forest to escape the tiger while Baloo, Bagheera, and the wolves attempt battle with the enraged tiger but to no avail (and injuries to Baloo). Ultimately, Mowgli’s tricks win out, as he prepares a vine-rope for an escape route, lures Shere Khan up to a weakened limb on a very tall tree where the branch and the tiger tumble into the fire just as Mowgli swings away from the danger on his rope. Then the mighty elephants arrive to push rocks and trees into the river, diverting its flow to the forest, extinguishing the fire. When calm returns at a later time, we see Mowgli’s wolf-mother, Raksha (Lupita Nyong’o), taking command of the pack while her son’s still with them instead of joining the humans, with Bagheera and Baloo now napping in a tree with Mowgli as well.
So What? For anyone familiar with the original 1967 Disney animated version of this tale (overall direction from Wolfgang Reitherman, although Walt Disney himself took a major hand in the story development before his death in 1966) or even read the original Rudyard Kipling book (1894), a collection of short stories 3 of which involve Mowgli, you’re going to find differences from these originals; primarily, the Kipling stories present separate accounts of aspects of Mowgli’s life, with the latter one finally having him living in the human village, adopted by parents who believe him to be their long-lost-son, Nathoo, while the 1st Disney version puts these stories into linear form, ending with Mowgli voluntarily entering the village as he’s smitten by a young girl from there, but gives a mostly light-hearted, musical structure to the boy’s adventures (except when he’s almost eaten by the snake or the tiger—if you want to refresh yourself a bit on the 1967 Disney … Book, here’s the original trailer [3:41, quite long by our current standards], along with a video that claims to be a comparison of that trailer with the current one [although it’s really just the 2016 trailer with side-by-side-parallel-scenes from the earlier movie]). I had hoped to provide you with a site where you could watch some or all of the 1967 animated feature for free but I’ve yet to find such that works properly; one that I originally thought was useful turned out to be virus-infected (which cost me several hours and several hundred dollars to fix; beware anything that might come up with "The Jungle Book 1967 full movie" search, although there is one on YouTube which is somehow missing about 11:00 from the officially-stated-running-time and has the original squarer-format transformed to our wide-screen-standard if you're interested in that one, despite losing some of the image and getting an overall glare on the screen) so if you wish to see the proper older Disney version of The Jungle Book please feel free to pay for a purchase of a disc or a download.
In contrast to the source-stories that inspire the new ... Jungle Book, our current narrative retains the linear plot of the previous Disney structure but adds some powerful-on-screen-deaths (Shere Khan killing Mowgli’s father in the shadows of a cave then later tossing Akela over a cliff, Mowgli plotting Shere Khan’s steep fall into the burning forest) along with the twist of Mowgli’s return to the wolf pack rather than the human village (maybe at least until he grows a little older and realizes that mating with one of his clan wouldn’t fit the lupine code very well). Given this darker attitude (including how Mowgli accidently starts a raging forest fire, underscoring the danger that the jungle animals feel humans represent to their existence [taking us back to another Disney classic, Bambi {supervising director David Hand, 1942}]) this PG version of the story may be a bit intense for younger kids, especially with the fearsome animals looking so lifelike as opposed to the earlier cartoon appearances. Further, this movie may raise some Oscar-nomination-questions in early 2017 as to whether it belongs in consideration with other live-action-stories or should be considered as a feature-length-animation given that Mowgli and his human father are about the only photographed elements in it, with the animals (and almost all of their surroundings) being generated, then put into motion by computer. I’ll leave that one for the Academy experts to figure out (I’ll also leave it to you to decide if you want to spend the extra cash for a 3-D-screening or not; I didn’t make that choice, but I read that it’s quite spectacular in that mode, one of the few 3-D’s to actually warrant such technique).
You can also decide if these animals all speak English in far-off-anticipation of India’s later inclusion in the British Empire or if they actually talk in some dialect of Hindi which has been converted into the universal tongue of today for our benefit just as older Hollywood movies did for stories set anywhere outside the Empire's-heritage-environs (such as in Casablanca [Michael Curtiz, 1942] where a host of nationalities all speak the modern version of Anglo-Saxon so that Rick Blaine [Humphrey Bogart] could converse with them in north Africa's Morocco), allowing monolingual American audiences (including me) to avoid struggling through “the horror, the horror” of subtitles.
It made for a very enjoyable couple of hours for me (and Nina), an opinion seconded by the hearty applause from my child-filled-theater-crowd at the end (heartier than the smattering of such cheer following A Hologram … the night before, but that audience was considerably older [like me again], maybe saving energy for lifting the post-screening-dinner-fork [or hamburger bun in our case]). I always struggle a bit in terms of rating such a cinematic offering when I know that it's perfectly aimed at its target audience in terms of intent, content, and execution but does that mean it's worthy of my (normally) highest rating of 4 stars, as something worth watching again and enduring as cultural gold for future generations? In the case of this new version of The Jungle Book I'd say yes; where things like standard teenage romance or horror movies (in the worst case scenario, a mixture of the 2 such as in the Twilight series) I'd normally find fewer stars to be more appropriate.
In my ongoing ambition (usually a losing cause) to keep comments in my sometimes-used (or is it just attempted?) Short Takes section to a bare minimum I’m also trying to keep research time for reviews in this section less-all-consuming so I’ll take a short cut to a Musical Metaphor by using one of the 3 songs to survive from the original animated feature into this newly-honed-manifestation, “The Bare Necessities” (sung by Phil Harris in this great older version) at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=9 ogQ0uge06o because that’s the method Favreau’s used here to keep his story successful: generally following the plot lines of the animated original (except making the elephants into revered figures of the jungle rather than another form of comic relief, presenting death as a reality rather than an implication, keeping Mowgli in the jungle at the end) as well as focusing the conflict simply on the tiger’s desire to kill what he sees as a natural enemy vs. the boy’s desire to remain a creature of the wild, ultimately taking revenge upon a more powerful predator for needlessly killing both of his fathers (natural and adopted) rather than confusing things with any further subplots or even location shooting when computers can create fantastic environments as well as characters. Favreau takes Baloo’s advice to “don’t spend your time lookin’ around For something you want that can’t be found” because “When you find out you can live without it And go along not thinkin’ about it […] The bare necessities of life will come to you.” (In this current … Book, Murray and Sethi sing this song, with a reprise by Dr. John and the Nite Trippers under the closing credits while Johansson sings “Trust in Me” also under those credits; Christopher Walken croons “I Wan’na Be Like You” in the movie [Louis Prima sang this latter one in the 1967 version, Sterling Holloway the former]).
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Here’s more information about A Hologram for the King:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tidlXaB54I (5:56 interview with actor Tom Hanks from CBS This Morning but he talks about the film for only about half that time; I had a nice behind-the-scenes-featurette for you but it got removed from YouTube a day after I found it so if you speak Arabic here’s a guy at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRTZUWzRnn8 giving commentary in what seems to be a 16:18 review although I have no idea what he’s saying so please don't hold me accountable for it)
Here’s more information about The Jungle Book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVFVQeGPil8 (extremely long featurette—1:37:12—of extensive behind the scenes aspects of this movie [be prepared to be interrupted by ads at times] if you want to watch aspects of the production process and various statements from director Favreau along with many of the actors that go on almost as long as the actual movie [note that some of it gets repetitious so you may need to speed through those parts but in short bits so that you don’t miss something new toward the end; there’s a lot to appreciate here but it’s not a well-edited-collection of background bits, so my apologies if it’s more trouble than it’s worth, although the foundational parts are quite interesting])
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By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile. Ken
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.
WE DO OUR VERY BEST TO PRESENT THESE TWO GUYS POSTINGS IN A VISUALLY-CONSIDERED GRAPHIC LAYOUT, BUT EXTENSIVE TRIAL-AND-ERROR HAS SHOWN US THAT UNLESS YOU’RE READING OUR REVIEWS ON A MACINTOSH COMPUTER USING MAC OS X 10.10.5 AND SAFARI 9.1 YOU’LL LIKELY SEE A SLOPPIER PRESENTATION THAN WHAT WE INTENDED (but Google Chrome 50.0.2661.86 usually comes fairly close to our intentions). OUR APOLOGIES FOR ANY INADVERTENT MESS THAT WE HAVEN’T YET FOUND A SUCCESSFUL WAY TO CONTROL.
