Tarzan

By the late 90s, the Disney Renaissance was dying. The company’s films were being criticized as too formulaic, with history and classic literature and mythology becoming whitewashed or dumbed down. The influx of direct to video sequels also weren’t helping. Summer of 1999 saw Tarzan released as the last film of the Renaissance. Starring Tony Goldwyn, Minnie Driver, Glenn Close, Brian Blessed, Rosie O’Donnell, and Wayne Knight, the film was the most expensive animated film ever made at the time, with a budget of $130 million.

In the late 1880s, a couple and their infant son wind up in Africa after a shipwreck. Later, Kala (Close), a gorilla whose infant son was killed by the leopard Sabor, hears a baby crying in an abandoned treehouse. She enters and sees the human baby. She takes the boy away to save him from Sabor but her mate, Kerchak (Lance Henriksen), despises him for his appearance. Kala raises him anyway, naming him Tarzan (Goldwyn). He grows up to be a strong ape-man, befriending a tomboy gorilla and neurotic elephant (O’Donnell and Knight). But a British expedition team (Driver, Blessed, and Nigel Hawthorne) studying gorillas happens by and Tarzan must decide where he belongs.

This film has some good clever and subtle moments. One of them being the entire trashing the camp sequence. The gorillas and Tantor think they’re doing something interesting and making a doo wop style song. But when the humans come back, we see all they’re doing is completely wrecking the entire place. It’s a good contrast to the mindset of both parties. The subtle moments with Tarzan also work really well. Especially with the scene when he “speaks” with Jane for the first time. It shows that he’s finally found a creature like him, but he has no idea what to make of it. Jane’s father also has a really great subtle joke when mentioning that Rudyard Kipling would enjoy meeting Tarzan.

And there’s Tarzan as a character. He’s got a very interesting conflict on whether or not he stays with what he knows and is comfortable with him or he joins the expedition because they’re like him. And, in the end, he realizes the jungle is his home. It’s Jane and her father that decide to abandon everything to join him.

Kerchack is first set up to be a minor antagonist, until it’s realize he’s really doing what he does because it’s his duty to protect the group. He himself might have no qualms, but he doesn’t know for sure and he really doesn’t want to risk everything on a hunch. Clayton is a good main villain, not caring about what anyone else around him wants, he just wants to find gorillas so he can get money. And when that fails, he’s just so intent on getting Tarzan as revenge, that he doesn’t see the snare he caught himself in. He orchestrated his own downfall.

Unfortunately, the film’s subtlety is ruined by Phil Collins. Not his orchestration, but the songs he sings. None of the characters sing anything about what’s going on with them. It’s always Collins pretty much outright describing the conflicts and emotions. And while the songs aren’t bad in and of themselves, they take the small moments that were really subtle and interesting and smash it with a hammer while yelling “this is what the movie means!”

Tarzan’s pretty good. But it’s not as good as most of the films before it. And theatergoers at the time realized this. The Renaissance was over and what followed was a dearth of creativity that could never quite match up. 

#15