Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle Review

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle is a Netflix Original film that aims to once again tell this tale that we've heard one too many times before. It also doesn't do anything new with the source material aside from being slightly darker. Pair that with horrible CGI right from the start and it's a rather poor experience. I'm not sure if that acting was terrible in this, but I wasn't blown away seeing these fake looking animals come to life within this large scale jungle.

The backdrops were largely fine, but when you're taking popular voice actors and throwing them into these creatures it needs to look believable to convey the emotions properly. That aside, the tale itself wasn't that interesting. One young boy gets thrown into a pack of wolves and gets brought up by them. There's a mean antagonist creature and it just sort of goes along. There's no real depth to it and most of the story felt very muddled. By the end I was just over it and probably won't think of this film again.

It'll be hard to forget the horrible CGI that is right there from the beginning. They do a whole setup and show these quick wild segments where people are floating in obvious fake situations. It's not a good way to set the stage and while it gets better, it still doesn't look great. It's easy to tell why this one didn't make it into the theaters, somewhat mean of a comment but quite true.

The acting was alright behind the awkward looking creature designs. It was odd looking, very strange actually seeing these various animals and their expressions. It also really lacked the soul of the more classic takes on this and while I like gritty, I don't it was used in an interesting way here. Perhaps, the soul of this was the lead Mowgli (Rohan Chand) and for the most part he was fine. I found it rather long as well.

The Conclusion

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle brings a rather boring take on a tale that we've seen done too many times with facially odd looking creatures and poor CGI. It really is just appalling at times and it sticks out badly, the environments were mostly fine though. The narrative seemed to bounce along casually and while they tried to get some deeper areas it came across as largely silly.

I wasn't blown away by this and it felt like a long waste of time that didn't add anything of value to this classic story. I'll definitely forget it and I can see why it didn't make its way into the theater as this would have been embarrassing. It's disappointing to see such a cast come together for what's just not a very good film.

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle Review at Home with Streamed Viewing

Rating Overall: 4.0