Tarzan & Jane

Summer 2002 saw the first sequel to Tarzan, set one year after the events of the film. Tarzan & Jane uses the last three episodes of the television series and stars Michael T. Weiss, Olivia d’Abo, Jeff Bennett, Jim Cummings, Grey DeLisle, Kevin Michael Richardson, Tara Strong, April Winchell, and Nicollette Sheridan.

Framed by Tarzan and Jane’s first anniversary, she wants to find a suitable present and gets the help of Tantor and Terk. However, they remind her of the disasters that occurred the last time Tarzan was exposed a party, gifts or dancing.

I enjoyed this, thinking it was a pilot film for the series, sort of like how Return of Jafar was to Aladdin. But then, I found out the episodes actually did air and were the last three. So this pretty much falls squarely in how I feel about things that have been repackaged.

It was good, which speaks to how good the television series is. But if they wanted to put episodes of the series on a movie, they could have just released the seasons. This is, again, a cash grab to kids that wouldn’t notice they’re watching something they already did.

I’m not putting this past the Edge of Dissatisfaction, considering it was pretty good, but the rehash of it put it pretty far down.

#64

Return to Neverland

Early 2002 saw one of Disney’s few theatrical sequels. Return to Neverland continued the Peter Pan story with voice acting by Harriet Owen, Blayne Weaver, Corey Burton and Jeff Bennett. The film cost $20 million and garnered almost $90 million worldwide. And while it was a theatrical release, it’s still not part of the main Disney canon. There’s also two songs sung by They Might Be Giants.

Wendy (Kath Soucie) is all grown up with two children and a husband, who is off fighting in WWII. However, her daughter, Jane (Owen), has become cynical. She ignores her mother’s stories and ridicules her brother’s (Andrew McDonough) faith in them.

But one night, Captain Hook (Burton) kidnaps her, thinking she’s Wendy, for revenge against Peter Pan. Now, she must find a way home and the Lost Boys (Spencer Breslin, Bradley Pierce, Quinn Beswick, Arron Spann) and Peter (Weaver)have to find a way for her to believe in fairies to keep Tinker Bell from dying.

This one surprised me.

Where the original Peter Pan spoke of how growing up is a fact of life that everyone must face, Return to Neverland speaks to the inverse. Growing up may be a fact of life, you may have to face it, but don’t be too quick to do so. Under the pressures of war, Jane forgets what it means to be young and full of childlike wonder and faith and chastises her younger brother for having it. It’s not until she spends time in Neverland with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys does she understand the necessity of being a kid. That’s also where the song, “I’ll Try” comes in, which in her perspective, goes from her believing herself to have no need for stories and trust to seeing how faith, trust and pixie dust pretty much make up the world.

And I know the criticisms, wartime is harsh and needs to be taken seriously, even by children. But there needs to be a balance. Going completely cynical doesn’t do any good and is in no way beneficial. The need for hope, trust and faith is still prevalent during war. In fact, it’s completely necessary.

The animation is wildly different from the original, but that can be attributed to how the animation department went through massive changes in the 50 years between films.

There’s one really odd thing though. Hook apparently bested the crocodile. And now there’s an octopus that pops. It doesn’t make sense and should have been left out. That or the crocodile should have stayed.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to this, considering how many of the sequels have just not been that great. But Return to Neverland wasn’t. It actually makes me slightly hopeful for the Pixie Hollow line of films.

#30.

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

Cavalcade (1933)

It’s 1934 and the 6^th Academy Awards. The most nominations for the year went to Cavalcade, A Farewell to Arms, and Lady for a Day, with four each. However, Cavalcade went away away with the most awards: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Art Direction. 

I couldn’t find this one either, which is unfortunate because I was really looking forward to it. So, I’ll do the same thing I did with Broadway Melody.

The film itself goes from 1899 to 1933 and follows a well-to-do English family. The lives of Jane and Robert Marryot and their lives in London are on display as the film goes through various historical events, such as the Second Boer War, Titanic and World War I.

Here’s reelviews.com’s review of the film.