Bad weather and other aggravations kept me away from the theaters on the weekend of April 16. Had I ventured out, I would have headed for The Jungle Book and Criminal. The trailers for the second one make me suspect that it is a variation of the Philip K. Dick story we know as Total Recall, so that film is not a very high priority if something better comes along.
As for The Jungle Book, I remember being very impressed by the animated Disney version even though I thought the animation was too crude. I also remember a black and white version from the 1940s with an actor named Sabu. I have not seen that version in nearly sixty years, so I can’t pretend to remember much about it. I had read Kipling’s book long before I saw the Sabu film, and I don’t think the film came close to Kipling’s original concept.
Jungle movies seem to be popular this year. Sometime this summer, we can expect a new Tarzan film, The Legend of Tarzan. No Tarzan film has ever adhered to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s original story, although a film in the 1980’s, Greystoke, did try. The trailers for the new one indicate that it will be even more inaccurate than Greystoke. (I have to admit that the current Geico ad with Tarzan and Jane fussing at each other is very, very clever.)