My daughter’s latest passion is renting videos (all by herself!), and before one of our recent trips to the video store, she already knew exactly what she wanted to rent…Tarzan! She really didn’t know much about the Tarzan story, but thanks to good ol’ McDonalds she had a little wind-up figure of Kala with young Tarzan on her back, and she wanted to see the movie. [Side Note – we rarely eat fast food, but she loves the surprise in her Happy Meal, while I get irritated at the blatant Disney marketing and the cheap quality of toys! But I digress…]

I certainly wasn’t expecting much when we began this movie. As a child, I loved Disney movies, but they just don’t seem to be as good as they were way back when, and I usually end up irritated and disappointed after watching one. Tarzan was, surprisingly, an exception to this rule!

The movie begins with a man, woman and baby abandoning a blazing ship on the ocean. We then jump scenes to a group of gorillas in the jungle, focusing in on a family consisting of a father, mother and baby gorilla. The opening scenes flash back and forth between these two families, showing us parallel stories, while we hear a Phil Collins music score that not only tells the story, but also really sets the mood. We go from seeing happy families enjoying each other and, in the case of the humans, building a nice little house in the trees, to the feeling that tragedy is about to strike…

Suddenly a vicious leopard disrupts the pleasant scene and ends up killing the baby gorilla we’ve been watching! Don’t worry, nothing graphic is shown here, just the leopard chasing the baby, then the baby and leopard disappear and we see a very sad mommy and daddy gorilla. Shortly thereafter, the mother gorilla, Kala (voice of Glen Close), hears a strange noise - the cry of a baby. She investigates and finds a ransacked cabin…with bloody leopard prints all over the floor. Of course the cry she heard is that of the human baby, the only survivor of the ferocious attack on his family.

Kala saves the baby from the leopard, which is still lurking about waiting to finish his dinner, and adopts the little human, bestowing him with the name Tarzan. Her mate who is also the leader of the gorillas, Kerchak, is not at all pleased and refuses to accept little Tarzan as a member of their group, and certainly not as his son. From here we get to witness Tarzan grow into a boy who realizes, sadly, that he is not like the rest of his family. As the boy develops into a man (voice of Tony Goldwyn) he discovers that although he cannot do many of the things his gorilla kin can, he has special skills they do not. These skills help him to ultimately win the love and respect of his gorilla-father, Kerchak.

Let’s not forget Jane! Jane (voice of Minnie Driver) comes to the island with her father to research gorillas. We can presume they are scientists as they bring along all kinds of equipment. They also bring a guard, Clayton, to protect them. Clayton is a big, burly guy who is very trigger happy with his shotgun. This is one part of the movie I really didn’t like, but I guess there has to be a bad guy.

From here the movie has a lot of situation comedy with Tarzan trying to communicate with Jane and the other gorillas discovering the human things. Now that I have a toddler and have become subjected to many Disney movies, I’ve noticed there is almost always a “comic relief” character. In this movie that part belongs to Terk (voice of Rosie O’Donnell), a female gorilla who is a little older than Tarzan. I found her part quite annoying, but my daughter didn’t seem to mind. For those of you who do not know the classic Tarzan story (is that possible??), I won’t give it away, and for the majority of you who do, I won’t bore you with a play by play of the remainder of the movie!

The animation in this film was amazing. Some of my favorite parts are the jungle scenes. It is obviously computer animated, but the scenes with Tarzan flying through the jungle are great. This is certainly not my favorite Disney movie, but it was a good one and we ended up buying it on DVD. Since then we have seen The Emperor’s New Groove and Shrek, both of which I do like better. Disney’s version of Tarzan was released in 1999 and I do recommend this movie to anyone who likes the Tarzan story. If you like this movie, you will probably enjoy The Jungle Book as well. Stay tuned for more reviews later…

Thanks for reading!

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8