Neel Sethi in ‘The Jungle Book’ (Disney)

By Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter

The beguilingly credible CGI rendering of real-life animals takes its biggest leap forward since Life of Pi in Disney’s new telling of The Jungle Book.Exceptionally beautiful to behold and bolstered by a stellar vocal cast, this umpteenth film rendition of Rudyard Kipling’s tales of young Mowgli’s adventures amongst the creatures of the Indian jungle proves entirely engaging, even if it’s ultimately lacking in subtext and thematic heft. Most Jungle Book big-screen adaptations have done very well at the box office — the 1967 version, the last animated film Walt Disney personally supervised, was the second-biggest grosser of its year, behind only The Graduate — and this one will be no exception upon its April 15 release as it takes the baton from the studio’s fresher, more original smash Zootopia.

Nor will this be the last we hear of Mowgli, Shere Khan, Kaa and the others for a while. Warner Bros.’ live-action Jungle Book: Origins, directed by Andy Serkis and featuring the likes of Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch and Serkis himself as Baloo the bear, started shooting a year ago and is set for release in October 2017.

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From the embracing opening image (extra effective in 3D), which smoothly backtracks from the Cinderella castle logo right into the jungle setting, director Jon Favreau makes his new film instantly welcoming with its wonderfully detailed wilderness environment anyone would swear is real. It also provides clear dramatic orientation through the imposing voice of narrator Ben Kingsley in the guise of the black panther Bagheera, who watches over orphaned Indian boy Mowgli (Neel Sethi, who’s limber, energetic and a tad emphatic at times). The latter has been raised by wolves but can scamper through the trees with the assurance of a monkey and is able to survive partly by virtue of a truce that allows all animals to gather around a watering hole without fear of becoming lunch for their natural predators.

Justin Marks’ script may veer rather too far from reality in depicting its jungle creatures as fundamentally peaceable, apart from the menacing tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba, oozing malignant nuance) and Kaa, an enormous tree-dwelling serpent given hypnotically seductive voice by Scarlett Johansson. To be sure, Disney has not dropped the genre’s sure-fire comic-relief staples (a baby elephant, a cutesy little porcupine), but the exceptional photographic realism lends the work a real-world gravity that sets it leagues apart from the strenuously ingratiating kid-pic conventions in the likes of the Madagascar or Ice Age series, for example, and will help invest even adult audiences in the incident-packed adventure. Not only in their appearances are the creatures here quite far from being traditional cartoon critters; they talk (predominantly in distinguished British-tinged English) among themselves and with Mowgli, who possesses a conspicuously American accent.

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The action pivots on Bagheera’s decision that it’s finally time for Mowgli to leave his jungle home and join his own species. Protesting that he doesn’t have a clue what humans are like, Mowgli is finally convinced when the wise panther promises to see him to his destination, resulting in a treacherous trek that leads them across increasingly inhospitable landscapes and into contact with all manner of animals. It’s like a Heart of Darkness for kids.

The tone significantly shifts with the arrival of Baloo (Bill Murray), a genial rascal of a bear whose addiction to honey instantly stamps him as a grown-up Winnie the Pooh. Strenuous effort has been expended to inject every line of Baloo’s ever-flowing commentary with snappy comedy, a challenge met with success perhaps half the time. It also falls to Murray to resurrect Terry Gilkyson’s song “The Bare Necessities” from the 1967 film.

But while the simple Baloo is content with the massive honeycombs Mowgli is able to procure for him, a more formidable figure awaits in a spectacular abandoned ancient city. Kidnapped by no-nonsense monkeys, Mowgli is put at the mercy of the Godfather of the jungle, a grossly overgrown orangutan named King Louie (Christopher Walken) who talks with an old New Yawk accent and insists that Mowgli “summon the red flower,” the animals’ term for the one thing humans seem to possess and control that animals can’t: fire. For his part, sometime song-and-dance man Walken gets to reprise the Sherman Brothers’ tune Louis Prima handled 49 years ago, “I Wan'na Be Like You.”