by Jamie Clubb

Created on: February 22, 2010

Not since 1940's Fantasia has a feature length Disney animation celebrated music so much. Like Bambi, Jungle Book is strung together by long musical pieces, but unlike Bambi the pieces in question are songs sung by the characters. The music in question is generally jazz and swing in style with a consistent upbeat tempo. This helps create the very light hearted backdrop for a film that is more of a family viewing allegory for the swinging '60s than a serious attempt to bring Rudyard Kipling's short stories to life. As is the case with most of Disney's pictures, The Jungle Book is very much its own entity. In this instance it is mainly due to the decision to cast well known actors and singers as the voices of the various colourful characters. This inspired the writers and animators to take their cues more from these particular personalities than what was written in the original stories. In fact, Walt Disney - who died during the production of this film - gave one of the film's writers, Larry Clemmons, a copy of Kipling's book with the instructions "The first thing I want you to do is not read it". Years later the celebrities that provided the voices have long since left mainstream consciousness, but the characters that they helped create are now institutions alongside most other Disney creations.

Baloo the bear, voiced by Phil Harris, is clearly the most successful character in the whole film. Miles away from the stern mentor of Kipling's stories, the Disney writing team recreated him as a "jungle bum". He's an easygoing and fun loving character that probably would find his real-life counterpart in the archetypical hippy of the '60s. The laidback rogue with a heart would be a persona liked by Disney Studios so much that it would help to influence Thomas O'Malley, again voiced by Phil Harris, in 1970's "The Aristocats" and the whole character of Baloo would be lifted for the character of Little John in 1973's Robin Hood. For that matter Sir Hiss, the villainous slimy sidekick of King John, is a slightly weaker version of Jungle Book's Kaa, complete with hypnotic stare.


The film includes the Hollywood cliché of a very English villain by having George Sanders voice the main antagonist Shere Khan. Unfortunately Bhagheera, having the quintessential "butler" actor, Charles Cabot, act his part is relegated to a less memorable position. He is quite bland when contrasting with the other larger than life characters such as the orang-utan, King Louie, voiced by the flamboyant jazz/swing singer Louis Prima. Louie is a completely Disney/Prima creation with no basis in Kipling's work at all and his single scene threatens to steal the show from even Harris's Baloo. His "I Wanna be Like You" is as famous as Baloo's "The Bare Necessities".

It easy to look at The Jungle Book as a veritable Disney classic, based on its innovative use of jazzy new songs to move along a story inspired by Kipling's works. It was not supposed to be an accurate adaptation of the source material anymore than any of Disney's previous "pantomimes" of popular children's stories. However, its success was far from being totally original. You don't have to look far to see that the whole swapping and chasing rescue sequence from the ancient ruins takes heavy reference from the Looney Tunes cartoons. Nevertheless, this doesn't take anything away from the strong characterizations and very memorable songs that made it a tremendous success upon each of its re-releases.

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