Tarzan Blu-ray Review
The original swinger.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, May 17, 2013
When it comes to film (and television) adaptations of his work, Edgar Rice Burroughs has had a pretty hard time of it
overall when you pause to really think about it. Even putting aside the supposedly disastrous
John Carter (a misfire, to be
sure, but not the out and out horror some people claimed), Burroughs' most iconic character, Tarzan, has often received
short shrift on both the large and small screens. While the popular Johnny Weissmüller series from the thirties and the
forties still remains perhaps the best remembered adaptation, few would argue that the series has much to do with
Burroughs' original conception, especially as the films became more and more ludicrous as the series wore on. Even
less "genuine" were the replacements for Weissmüller, actors as disparate as Lex Barker and Gordon Scott, though
finally the series did seek to get at least a little closer to the Burroughs novels with two Scott vehicles,
Tarzan's
Greatest Adventure and
Tarzan the Magnificent. Things got so bad during the sixties that one Tarzan
outing actually had the jungle hero posing as a sort of international spy, albeit just slightly atavistic, a la James Bond.
Ron Ely donned a loincloth for a short lived television series around this same time, episodes of which were cobbled
together for the secondary market as supposed "feature" films. Not much happened in Tarzan land after that until the
early eighties when both
Tarzan, the Ape Man and
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
opened within a few years of each other and sought to reboot the franchise for a new generation. Both films actually
did okay at the box office, but neither was universally lauded by critics, with both films coming in for rather serious
drubbing (not to mention
dubbing in the case of
Greystoke's Andie McDowell, who had her voice
replaced by Glenn Close). One final feature film called
Tarzan and the Lost City appeared in the late nineties,
and that's been it in terms of live action fare, though a long gestating new version is still caught in development hell at
Warner. (It should be noted that this is only a cursory list of the best known Tarzan outings through the year and is
not meant to be an exhaustive inventory.) Which finally brings us to
animated versions of the iconic hero.
Though Disney's
Tarzan was a rather successful outing in what has been termed the "Disney Renaissance" of
the eighties and nineties, and in fact is often cited as the last big hit of that renaissance, though its reputation has
never quite reached the heights of some other Disney films from this same
basic period, iconic entertainments like
The Little Mermaid and
Beauty and the Beast.
It would hardly seem possible at first (or maybe even second or third) glance that the Disney forces taking on a
property
like
Tarzan would produce anything even closely resembling its source material. This is, after all, the studio of
cutely anthropomorphized animals who speak with celebrities' voices and who often seem more human than whatever
humans themselves are in any given property. And yet quite unexpectedly, this
Tarzan, for all its admitted
"Disney-fication", comes rather close to at least some elements of Burroughs' original conception. This starts with the
opening scene which gives us the desperate events which brought young Lord Greystoke to the jungle and ultimately
placed him under the care of a maternal gorilla (voiced by, ironically enough, Andie MacDowell's dubber Glenn Close).
The opening ten or so minute sequence is a model of concise story telling, as Phil Collins' "Two Worlds" orients us both
to the Greystoke family, cast away on a jungle island after their ship burns, and the gorilla brood of Kala (Glenn Close)
and Kerchak (Lance Henriksen). The gorillas are parents to lively little baby who in a terrifying scene in this segment is
killed by Sabor, a leopard. Later, Kala, heartbroken, hears cries from another infant and finds the Greystoke's tree
house, where the two parents have also obviously succumbed to Sabor. Inside a bassinet Kala finds the infant
Greystoke, only to realize within moments that Sabor is still inside the tree house. A violent skirmish breaks out, but
Kala ultimately is able to escape with her "new" baby in tow. This elegant segment gives us all the background we
really need to understand the emotions at play and it sets up the rest of the film magically.
The next twenty minutes or so introduces us to the newly named Tarzan as a little boy, along with two of his friends,
the impish gorilla Terk (Rosie O'Donnell) and the skittish elephant Tantor (Wayne Knight). This segment also highlights
what continues to be a theme throughout the film, Tarzan's desire to blend in with his gorilla family, something that
Kala encourages but which Kerchak is not very kindly about.
At this point, the film segues fairly seamlessly to Tarzan as an adult (voiced by Tony Goldwyn), detailing his
longstanding relationships with his gorilla "relatives" and two best friends, as well as a showdown with Sabor. But
then the film starts to go at least slightly off the rails with the introduction of the characters who form the bulk of the
rest of the story, members of an expeditionary team including Jane (Minnie Driver), her father Professor Porter (Nigel
Hawthorne), and the film's Snidely Whiplash-esque villain, Clayton (Brian Blessed). Up until this point
Tarzan
had some of the folktale like quality that was quite similar to Disney's version of
The Jungle Book. While the film
tries to meld some of Burroughs' original Tarzan mythology with a souped up story of poachers, it's an uneasy alliance
at best and arguably the weakest section of this
Tarzan.
There's no denying that there's some very real artistry running rampant throughout
Tarzan. The film quite
brilliantly finesses the whole "language" issue by introducing the animals first as grunting, snorting beasts and then
only later having them speak in English once Tarzan has joined the fray. And the first dialogue between Tarzan and
Jane very neatly recasts the iconic (if apocryphal) "Me Tarzan, you Jane" by having Tarzan be an incredible mimic who
starts parroting back everything Jane says. The film also has a rather deep emotional heft, especially as it cartwheels
toward its exciting finale. This may in fact only be half Burroughs, half something else, but on the whole it's one of
Disney's most satisfying animated efforts from this era.