Image Copyrights: Disney

Venue: DT City Centre Mall, Gurgaon
Date: 9 April 2016

People who have grown up in the eighties are familiar with Walt Disney’s cartoon film and TV series The Jungle Book. Baloo’s song “Bare Necessities” or the title song “Jungle Jungle Bat Chali Hai” stayed with us even after 30 years. It was therefore a bit of deja vu when we watched the new The Jungle Book movie at DT City Centre Gurgaon.

This is based on Rudyard Kipling’s famous story about a little boy Mowgli who was raised by a pack of wolves in an Indian jungle. While the new version is all three dimensional CG, it has a human component – Neel Sethi as Mowgli. An extremely gold looking kid, he and his toddler version (who was there for a few minutes) stole the audience’s heart. The voice overs of the characters like wolves and the other characters, notably Bagheera the panther, Baloo the bear, Monkey King, the snake and the fierce tiger Sher Khan were done by famous Hollywood actors such as Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Scarlett Johnson etc. It’s therefore no surprise that the film was top notch.

The script was crisp and notwithstanding these were a bunch of talking animals, the audience, kid and adult, were frequently at the edge of their seats. This film deserves to be watched from beginning till end credits as each portion is painstakingly created and the famous Monkey Song is the ending score.

We would recommend this film to young and old alike. It ends with a message that is relevant for all ages – No matter what, just be who you are.

We are going back to watch the Hindi version since we can’t let go of the nostalgia of listening to the song “Jungle Jungle Bat Chali Hai”  on big screen.