The Jungle Book (1991, VHS)

The Jungle Book video has been in our video collection for over two years. The cover has long been torn off the video box that is played on a daily basis in my house. I can hand the white box to my son and he knows it is The Jungle Book video. The only thing that took some getting used to was the voice of Sterling Holloway as the snake Kaa. We have come to love him as the voice of Winnie the Pooh. At the end of the video, is a clip of the story behind the making of The Jungle Book and the discussion on Walt Disney choosing the voice of the characters and he had the final say in the ending of..

I have always been a kid at heart. As such, it often makes it hard for me to look critically at things I loved as a child. But sometimes, watching something anew will surprise you and you will see your flaws. Such is the case with this film. Frankly, I want to love it. Released late in 1967, this was the last animated film to be supervised by Walt Disney himself. That alone makes it a special movie. But it falls a little short of some of the true classics. When Bagheera the panther (voiced by Sebastian Cabot) finds a man cub alone in the jungle, his first instinct is to leave it. But he can't.

On my second date with the man who would eventually become my husband, we went to India. Not the actual country! Instead we paid an imaginary visit to storybook India via the beautiful Disney film The Jungle Book. The family theater in our college town had brought it back to the big screen, and my one-day husband was thrilled since The Jungle Book had been just about his favorite movie as a little boy. I loved his enthusiasm then, and I still love it now, many years later, when we re able to share the fun of this still-classic movie with our own little girl. The Jungle Book originally hit...

This is the obstinate statement uttered again and again by Mowgli, the Indian boy raised by wolves in the jungle for his first ten years. He was discovered as a baby by Bagheera the panther and given into the care of a pair of wolves who had just been blessed with a litter of cubs. All is well until word reaches the wolves that the man-hating tiger Shere Khan is once again prowling the jungle. The council rules that they dare not put the entire wolf population at risk by keeping the boy in their midst, and Bagheera agrees to escort him to the man-village. Unfortunately, Mowgli is determined...