I took a range of generations from my family to see The Jungle Book last weekend at my favourite cinema in London, The Olympic Cinema, in Barnes – my mother remembers it being a cinema back in the day, then it turned into a music studio where the likes of The Rolling Stones and David Bowie recorded some of their most iconic albums and then a few years ago it got turned back into a very plush, red velvet seated cinema and restaurant with a private members bar upstairs. Well worth a visit.
Anyway, the film. So bearing in mind that we had my 71 year old mother sitting next to my 4 year old niece as well as my two boys and their girlfriends and my brother (sorry to my daughter who was back at uni and missed the outing), it is a massive compliment to the film that we all loved it. To find a way to appeal to all those different ages is something Disney do better than anyone else and they have certainly managed to achieve that again.
It was a beautiful, exciting, thrilling film – of course I would have loved a few more of the original soundtrack, but they did a good job of picking out the best bits and then adding more of the songs at the end….we all loved the characters and all the voices attache to them….except for Shere Khan, the baddie of the movie. My brother and I weren’t very impressed with his voice (sorry Idris Elba) and felt it was neither regal nor menacing enough. But that was our only complaint.
Aside from that and because not everyone agreed with us, it’s a 10/10 from my family.
