Disney's Tarzan

Twenty-for-Seven #17 (Day7)
1999, d. Kevin Lima (Enchanted) and Chris Buck (Frozen) - Disney+

I wasn't into the Disney Renaissance era of movies.  I had just become a teenager when The Little Mermaid hit theatres in '89 and was far, far more interested in Tim Burton's Batman than a singing water princess.  By the time the Renaissance era closed, with Disney's Tarzan, I had only seen The Lion King and was highly disinterested in the animated-musical style and princess-centricness of these films...and the Matrix just came out.  Plus Pixar had changed the game completely in both animation and family-centric storytelling.  The standard Disney Animated offerings, even those Renaissance era ones, seemed like relics.

As the last two decades rolled on, I still haven't warmed to those renaissance era films.  Aladdin is okay, the Lion King is pretty good, the rest...I still don't care.  So why Tarzan? Why now?

Well, Tarzan, because it's on the list of unwatched movies in my All Superhero Movies Ranked post, so I guess I should have intention of watching it some day.  That day was New Years Day 2020 because I had another 4 films I needed to watch for my 20 films in 7 days challenge, and I was looking at things I needed a push to watch.  Oh, and I was feeling like I needed to get *SOMETHING* else out of Disney+ besides just watching The Mandalorian over and over.  (I would've been perfectly happy to spend the same amount of time rewatching The Mandalorian instead of all the 20-4-7 movies, but I need to push myself out of my nerd-dome once in a while).

To say I immediately regretted putting on Tarzan would not be inaccurate.  The film launches into a Phil Collins song and an extended montage of Tarzan's parents having a shipwreck, landing on an island, establishing a home, and then getting (inferred) killed by a tiger, all intercut with a montage of a gorilla losing her baby to the same tiger and being sad.  To be fair, Collins' song is actually very well timed with the imagery, a few pauses taken here and there, that by minute three some emotional resonance between song and imagery really comes through...but I don't really care for Phil Collins and I found the whole thing tedious and a bit painful.

The montage prologue leads to the gorilla mom (Glenn Close) rescuing the baby, adopting it as her own, naming it Tarzan, raising it to childhood where he is seen kind of as an outcast, but not really bullied as much as you would think.  The alpha gorilla (Lance Henricksen), ostensibly his foster father, doesn't care much for him.  He grows up again and becomes a very sturdy man with no body or facial hair for some reason (with the voice of Tony Goldwyn).  He's got a gift of mimicry (which for some reason doesn't really come into play as a useful skill) and an agility, dexterity and fearlessness that's above human but also somehow beyond ape.  He also does this sliding-along-branches thing that just drives me fucking nuts, because it makes no sense.  Tree branches are not slick and feet are not smooth...how on earth is he sliding so extensively throughout the forest?  It's such an aggravating conceit that's meant to just be a cool talent he has, lending nicely to tracking shots through the jungle.

Anyway, it's Tarzan.  Of course, Jane (Minnie Driver) and her dad (Nigel Hawthorne), animal researchers, show up with a trigger happy guide (Brian Blessed) leading them through the jungle.  Tarzan and Jane form a bond, but Tarzan's gorilla-dad is afraid of them... with reason.  His encounter with the humans eventually gets him killed, and it's all Tarzan's fault.  Way to go, Tarzan! But he eventually saves the day and Jane and her dad come to live with the apes in the jungle, all happily ever after like.

I didn't mention the sidekicks, Tarzan's gorilla BFF Terk (Rosie O'Donnell) and elephant sidekick Tantor (Wayne Night), because they are the useless Timon and Pumba side story comic relief here that serve no purpose in the main narrative.  They're inconsequential and the film spends way too much time with them.  They get a particularly tedious Stomp-like found-sound rhythmic number that I just fast forwarded through.

There is some very nice animation in the film (I particularly like the thoughtfulness in Tarzan's physicality), but I just had a hard time connecting with the material.  It's Tarzan.  I never cared for Tarzan.  The most interesting part of Tarzan should be his savageness but that's the part Disney diluted the most.  He's mostly plain whitebread here, a handsome prince for a lost princess in the jungle to find.  Ugh, that Disney Renaissance formula.

Somehow, even though I had never watched the film before, I knew the Phil Collins songs with extensive familiarity (perhaps not every word, but certainly I knew all the songs well enough to hum along were I so inspired [I was not]).  I don't hate it but it just reminds me about what I don't like about that era of Disney.