Oh man, this movie is stunning. If only my words here could explain the viewing pleasure.
Rudyard Kipling's classic tale was mostly known to me from the old Hindi cartoon I used to watch and this movie brought all those memories back. It is admittedly darker than the cartoon and the old Disney remake (although not as dark as the actual book) but that is what you get when you have all these "real" animals talking. For the most parts, the visual effects in this one is more visual than effects and the story links with it smooth as knife through butter.
If you are not aware of the story already, a quick synopsis. Mowgli (Neel Sethi) is a "man-cub" who has lived amongst the wolves, mother Raksha (Lupita Nyong'o) and other jungle animals all his life until his life is threatened by the fearsome tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba). He then returns to fight the tiger after learning about the death of his father wolf, Akela (Giancarlo Esposito) while learning the bare necessities of life along the way.
The voice talents I listed above are perfect in their roles, even the smallest ones like porcupine voiced by the late Garry Shandling and it is no disrespect to any of those when I say that Idris Elba was the highlight. He was spectacularly terrifying as the tiger and I had some chills too sometimes when he was on screen. Other than him, I liked Baloo (Bill Murray) the best and Lupita has this calm smooth voice (that she displayed in Star Wars as well) which was a great counter balance to Shere Khan.
As I said, it is hard to believe all of this movie was shot in some sound stage in California and it is indeed a remarkable achievement for the movie technology. Some of the smaller animals (and some nature shots) did take me out for a very short time because of they looked too colorful and thus brought the CGI to the forefront but other than that, it was smooth and kept me engrossed in the story. One minor negative was that Kaa (Scarlett Johansson) did not stick out to me and personally her voice felt out of place.
A personal goal of mine, I hope I do not grow too old to appreciate and love these kind of movies. Having said that, this might not be a movie for very small kids (6 or lower). I did see some parents having to take their kids out of theaters when Shere Khan showed up :). Yep, he is terrifying. Oh and shout out to King Louie (Christopher Walken) who is great.
Movie Rating: 8/10