Comic-book Kipling: Mowgli the Wolf-boy, the Black Jungle, the Monkey City. The initial half-hour or so is a well-crammed phantasmagoria of eye-widening images: the runaway tandem of horses dragging a burning remnant of an exploded buckboard through the jungle; the nose-to-nose staring contest between child and panther; the simian-infested sacred ruin, the treasure room within, the giant serpent on sentry duty. Deep into the dark of an Arabian Night. Deep into the mouth of myth. The middle section slows down for cross-cultural education (vocabulary flashcards, Strauss waltzes) and interracial flirtation (Jason Scott Lee and Lena Headey, a handsome couple, and an ardently acted one as well, especially Lee's half of it), before the climactic return to the Monkey City for a couple of grandly poetic deaths. Fun, as the saying goes, for the whole family. Or for any solitary unit in it. With Cary Elwes and Sam Neill; directed by Stephen Sommers. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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