REVIEW: Tarzan

The Disney Renaissance of the 80's and 90's tended to follow a pretty standard formula; adapt a classic fairy tale into an animated musical. Maybe toss in a celebrity voice or two, write Alan Menkin a check, and you've got a hit on your hands. The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin all fit into this same mold, as timeless as they are. Personally, I find the films near the end of the Renaissance (or even immediately after it) to be more interesting overall. They mostly maintained that same classic idea of loose adaptation, but with a more varied pool of source material than before. Rather than lifting inspiration from the tales of The Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, the Disney films of the mid-late 90's (and even the early 2000's to some extent) branched out and took more risks; there was more creative exploration than ever before. We got Shakespeare performed by talking lions, Robert Louis Stevenson set in space, and Tarzan, a more comparatively-grounded interpretation of a classic piece of literature (although the titular character's movements took visual inspiration from professional surfers, so I suppose that's a radical enough creative decision by my standards).

The film opens as a British couple and their infant son are marooned off the coast of Africa. After his parents are killed by a leopard, the baby finds himself adopted by Kala (Glenn Close), a silverback gorilla who recently lost her own child. Dubbed Tarzan by his adoptive mother, the titular hero (Tony Goldwyn) struggles to find his place in a jungle where he is the only one of his kind. Just as things are looking up, however, the situation becomes more complicated with the arrival of an English exploration team led by Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (Nigel Hawthorne, in his final role) and his daughter, Jane (Minnie Driver). Along with them is Clayton (Brian Blessed), a scheming hunter accompanying the expedition as a guide. As Tarzan discovers for the first time creatures who are like him, he's forced to decide who his true family is and where he truly belongs.

First off, I love Disney's abilities to get me so invested in something as simple and dry as the story of Tarzan. The "ape-man" archetype is such a played out trope, yet the main character comes off almost like a superhero (despite just being an agile guy in a loincloth). The first act alone is like a compact film in and of itself, showcasing Tarzan's origins and youth, concluding with a confrontation with the leopard that killed his parents. The film wastes no time whatsoever in getting the audience invested in what's happening character-wise; the action is pulse-pounding and kinetic, yet there's also more than a few moments where I found myself getting legitimately misty-eyed. It's a film that hops from tone to tone with surprising grace and finesse, where we're just as immersed and attentive during the quiet moments of introspection as we are when soaring through the treetops at a breakneck pace.

Of course, this coming from Disney in the late 90's, the animation on display is both stellar and revolutionary. The production team behind the film developed a new program called Deep Canvas that allowed the film's artists and animators to create CGI backgrounds that took on the appearance of traditionally-painted murals. The effect is both seamless and gorgeous, holding up remarkably well nearly twenty years later. This period (just before the release of Shrek in 2001) was the peak of mainstream animation; while plenty of modern films such as The Peanuts Movie and The LEGO Movie find interesting ways to use CGI to their advantage, there's simply no substitute for the kind of 2D animation we got back in the day. Even a film as fantastic as The Incredibles is starting to show its age, but Tarzan will look this gorgeous forever.

And that's to say nothing of the soundtrack. Now as much as I still think that South Park got robbed at the Academy Awards (and as much as I love the retribution Matt Stone and Trey Parker have taken over the years), there's no denying that Phil Collins did a tremendous job with the soundtrack. Given the overall darker, more dramatic tone of this film, it would have felt odd having some of these characters (especially Tarzan himself) break into song as in previous Disney musicals. Collins' drum-heavy pop-rock manages to meld perfectly with the animation and overall aesthetic of the film without feeling the least bit jarring (the Son of Man sequence in particular is a favorite of mine); each musical sequence is essentially a gorgeously-animated music video, dodging that recurring musical pitfall of "the characters sing about whatever it is they're currently doing as they do it". There's a bit more nuance to the whole thing and it really goes a long way in striking the proper mood.

The cast here is quite strong, if not entirely utilized to their fullest. Tony Goldwyn does an excellent job as Tarzan, particularly in how he conveys the sense of contrast between when he's speaking to humans and animals. Amongst the apes, he's as eloquent as anyone, but his language is much more limited when it comes to speaking proper English. He manages to strike a good, natural balance without falling into the same tired "me Tarzan, you Jane" schtick we've seen a hundred times before. I also quite enjoyed Lance Henriksen (but really, when don't I enjoy Lance Henriksen?) as Kerchak, Tarzan's reluctantly adoptive father. This character has a surprising amount of depth and nuance for how little screentime he has, and I found his arc to be one of the more touching aspects of the story as a whole. Brian Blessed is of course wonderful as the villain, Clayton, and Glenn Close does a superb job of capturing that motherly spirit (as if Mother Simpson didn't illustrate that well enough). We also have Wayne Knight and Rosie O'Donnell as Tantor and Terk, two of Tarzan's animal friends and the primary comedic relief. This is the only part where the film really feels noticeably lacking, as these characters don't really have anything interesting or funny to do. Compared to other Disney comedic relief of this era (Mushu in Mulan, Timon and Pumbaa in The Lion King, etc.), they just don't stack up.

The character who completely stole the movie for me, however, was Minnie Driver as Jane Porter. This character is just so much fun and it's clear what a massive impact Driver's performance had on Jane's mannerisms and animation. She displays so much energy and emotion, never once feeling like a bland love interest or clichéd fish-out-of-water. She's clever and capable, but she also has moments of awkwardness and absurdity. It's not too often you get to see a female protagonist get involved in physical humor; it's a refreshing twist on the kind of protagonist-love interest relationship you see in this sort of movie. The sequence where Tarzan and Jane first meet (pursued by a pack of angry baboons) is one of my favorite scenes out of any Disney movie, just because it strikes that screwball action/adventure tone so perfectly. The scene which immediately follows, whereupon Tarzan finally understands just what he is, is wonderful for an entirely different reason; the chase is fun, energetic, and comedic, while the quieter interaction that follows is far more subtle and heartfelt by comparison. Its a pair of scenes that sum up the sides of this character's personality perfectly, and a big part of what makes her work so well is Minnie Driver's performance (Fun Fact: her "Daddy, they took my boot!" monologue was entirely improvised).

Overall, I have to say it's a shame that Tarzan, like so many other Disney films of the late/post Renaissance period, never seems to get the respect or adoration it so sorely deserves. It's the kind of film I would very much love to see come out of the Disney Animation Studios again; not only in the sense that it's traditionally animated, but in that it's a more low-key, inventive choice in film than what one would usually associate with Disney classics. Rather than your standard fairy tale or folk legend, Tarzan is an adaptation of a pulp novel from the early 1900's mixed with Phil Collins music and animation inspired by extreme sports. It's the kind of thing that you wouldn't necessarily immediately associate with the word "Disney", and that's precisely why I love it so much. Princesses will always be a safe bet, but after the box office numbers pulled in by Frozen. Zootopia, and Moana, I think it's safe to say that Disney can afford to be a little more daring a little more often. The fact that Zootopia (a cutesy talking animal flick that turned out to be a film noir crime-mystery about casual racism) performed as well as it did gives me hope that we'll see movies as nontraditional (or at least, nontraditional in a Disney sense) as Tarzan, Treasure Planet, and Atlantis sometime again soon.