My 90's and 2000's Experience: The Jungle Book

 Hey everyone, the holidays are over and it's time to kick off a whole new year here at the Geek Cave. As I mentioned in my last post, this year marks the 10th anniversary of me becoming a blogger. Which means I'll have lots of surprises for you this year. I've got some great ideas for the blog in 2025 and I hope you enjoy what I have planned this year. Today though I'm kicking off 2025 with a quick discussion on my favourite movie of all time: Disney's animated classic, The Jungle Book. I'm doing this a little differently than I did last year. For the movies and TV shows that I cover on the blog, I'm going to use the image of whatever physical media release I have or have had of the thing I'm talking about. So, if you want you can imagine that you're watching me on YouTube and I'm holding the VHS and/or DVD/Blu-ray of what I'm talking about. Except that I'm not. I'm writing a blog post. Same will go for books and comics, and anything else I talk about. Now, without further ado, let's get into it.

The Jungle Book is the first movie I ever saw in theaters. I talked about this in a post a long time ago, but Disney did a theatrical re-release of the movie on July 13th, 1990. I was 3 years old at the time and being that I was somewhat healthy at the time, my parents took me to see the movie. I don't know why they picked The Jungle Book as the first movie they decided to take me to see in theaters, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that I had The Bare Necessities episode of the Disney Sing-Along Songs series on VHS and was already singing along to both songs from the movie on a daily basis.

I love the music in this movie. The Sherman Brothers were major contributors to the Disney animation studio in the 60's, and everytime I watch the movie I catch myself dancing and singing (mouthing the words) along to them. Especially "The Bare Necessities" and "I Wanna Be Like You". Terry Gilkyson wrote "The Bare Necessities" and he had originally been hired to write the songs for the movie, but his songs were mostly grim and dark and not what Walt wanted for the movie, so he called in Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman in to do all new songs. But, he kept "The Bare Necessities" in because his staff at the studio loved it. I guess it was just one of those things where if the stars hadn't aligned properly or whatever, that song would never have been in the movie and I would've missed out on many hours singing along to the song. I actually have the entire soundtrack on iTunes because of how good it is.

There are certain points in the movie where I can't help but laugh. Like the first appearance of Colonel Hathi and the elephant brigade. And both times that Mowgli encounters Kaa the snake, voiced by the wonderful Sterling Holloway. Just the fact that Mowgli defeats Kaa the same way both times, simply by pushing him out of the tree, is funny and ridiculous to me at the same time.

But I think the character that represents The Jungle Book the most for me, and is my favourite character from the movie, is Baloo the bear, voiced by Phil Harris. He's just so much fun and I think Phil Harris, who ended up doing two more voice roles for Disney in the 70's, put so much life into the character just by ad-libbing and making the character his own.

The funny thing about The Jungle Book is that the 1997 VHS release was the first tape I bought to restart my VHS collection back in 2019. I've had the DVD for about ten years now. I currently have the Platinum Edition DVD in my collection, but I originally bought the Diamond Edition DVD for myself for my birthday not too long after it had come out back in 2014 and I also had the Limited Issue DVD, as I rescued it from my grandparents's house just before the pandemic hit in 2020. Up to that point I'd only ever had the original VHS, which had come out in 1991. Truth be told, I bought the Diamond Edition DVD thinking it was the Platinum Edition DVD, as the cover it showed on the website listing on the Chapters Indigo site showed the Platinum Edition DVD cover, not the Diamond Edition cover. So when I had the opportunity to get the Platinum Edition, I took it. And a friend of mine gave me my current copy of the Walt Disney Classics VHS.

I did a rewatch of the movie this weekend, and I watched it on both VHS and DVD, because I felt it was necessary. It had been a while since I'd watched the movie. It still holds up. And I think that's because, even though the remaining people said that Walt Disney was very hands on with the movie, Walt really couldn't've been as hands on with the movie closer to when it was released in 1967, as he passed away on December 15th, 1966, while the movie was still in production. So while he was more hands on during the development and early production of the movie, I really think it was the talents of the animators, musicians, voice cast, and writers that really made this movie what it is. 

If you've never seen this movie, I highly recommend watching it. It's on Disney+ and is pretty available on DVD and Blu-ray if you wanna seek it out on physical media. 

That's it for me for today. I don't know if I'm gonna do another blog post this week or not. But, I am making another guest appearance on the VHS Club Podcast this Thursday night, January 9th, at 9 pm (Eastern Standard Time) to discuss the premiere episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Farpoint" with Katie and Nat. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.