Tarzan

1999 "An immortal legend. As you've only imagined."
7.3| 1h28m| G| en| More Info
Released: 18 June 1999 Released
Producted By: Walt Disney Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

Tarzan was a small orphan who was raised by an ape named Kala since he was a child. He believed that this was his family, but on an expedition Jane Porter is rescued by Tarzan. He then finds out that he's human. Now Tarzan must make the decision as to which family he should belong to...

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Reviews

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.
Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Jesper Brun Firstly, let me say that Tarzan is a wonderful piece of animation with CG-backgrounds blending in flawlessly behind 2D rendered characters. In some movies I CG-backgrounds ugly and unpleasant (Titan A.E. for instance). I like the action scenes and the soft moments, both do good jobs at catching the audience. The songs are memorable as well, probably the finest work of Phil Collins as a singer/songwriter. And now for my few adjustments. They should have scrapped Clayton as the villain and made Sabor the main villain. Sapora kills Tarzan's parents! And brutally battles Tarzan in one scene! I would have loved to see more of that. Perhaps that would have changed the story significantly, but I would still love to see it. Aside from that little thing I really like the final product
Jawbox5 Tarzan is considered to be the final film of the 'Disney Renaissance'. It's hard to argue with that, as it was the studios last big box office hit and widely acclaimed film for a number of years. It is also a story that is perfectly tailored to Disney's style given its strong underlying themes and emotive characters. Importantly it understands the key aspects within the story as it provides a lot of feeling and intrigue to what is a straight-forward story. Tarzan's parents are killed in the jungle, he is raised by apes and he later battles the feelings that he doesn't belong with them. It is rather bare when you look at it like that, but Disney knows that what is important is seeing these characters grow and change through the challenges put in their way. Tarzan (Tony Goldwyn) himself is near perfect. He's kind, he's curious, he's smart, but he is also very much human and makes mistakes in realising that. He is someone that we can get behind and care about. Seeing him grow throughout the film and become more ape- like whilst becoming less human is really engaging. You do feel for him and connect with his struggle of getting his adoptive father to accept him as his own. I wasn't a fan of the stuff with the young Tarzan, but once he gets older the story keeps on becoming more interesting as we see Tarzan questioning who he is.The other characters are good too. Jane is just fantastic. She takes such joy from the little details, has plenty of funny moments and Minnie Driver does a superb job. Plus I found the romance between her and Tarzan very believable, more than I can say for many Disney efforts. Kala (Glenn Close) is nicely sympathetic and her bond with Tarzan is well developed, while Karchak has legitimate reasons for his hostility and Lance Henriksen is excellent as always. Clayton is a slightly weak villain and another who is just after money (which is a bit of a cop-out), but Brian Blessed's booming voice gives the character something of an edge. The professor (Nigel Hawthorne) gets some funny lines too. The animation is just spectacular. To see Tarzan effectively surf across the trees and vines is wonderful to see. What impresses me is how well the animation flows because at times it moves so quickly, especially in those surfing scenes. The jungle setting lends itself to some creative visuals too. There's some fabulous action sequences too that are always full of energy and really suspenseful, especially with the climax. The story is told relatively serious which is a suitable for a story like this. The comic relief can feel out of place but it is mostly kept to a minimum and most of the humour simply comes from the situations.The music is simply brilliant. I'm not a big fan of Phil Collins, but the songs here are really good songs and the lyrics perfectly convey the emotions that Tarzan is going through like they should. 'Two Worlds' and 'Strangers Like Me' are especially good. They might get in the way for some, but for me they were really impressive and never felt out of place. Of course the film isn't without flaws. Though Tarzan's dilemma is addressed, I would have liked to see the film look deeper into his problems. I also found characters like Terk (Rosie O'Donnell) rather annoying and not really needed. Plus I wish the cheetah that killed Tarzan's parents was given more of a story, he could have been a great obstacle for Tarzan to overcome given the personal history.Tarzan is a very impressive piece from Disney and it knows exactly where to keep its focus. It crafts a character that the audience cares about and puts him through a journey that we want to see the outcome of. I enjoyed how serious the story was kept and how the relationships between the characters felt real. It isn't perfect and stumbles at times, but its heart is always in the right place and when it works it is frequently brilliant. I like the characters, the animation is just great and the music is really effective. Tarzan is a worthy take on a well-known story, frequently striking a chord and doing what Disney do best.
karagoraymond A different but brilliantly adapted version of Borough's classic novel. From the get go Tarzan will have you wide eyed and waiting to see what will happen next. The opening sequence is one of the most impressive I have ever seen in film. The opening sequence is just so powerful as it shows the contrast of the human family (infant Tarzan with his parents) and the gorilla family living happily before tragedy strikes both families which leads Kala to finding the baby Tarzan. All done without dialog, all done with the great song "Two Worlds" in the background.Changing Tarzan's adoptive family to gorillas worked well because it showed a more gentle side to these great apes, which are often depicted as savage bruits in such films as King Kong and Planet of the apes. Tony Goldwyn did a great job as Tarzan; he hit the right balance of fun loving, relaxed and also emotional when it was required. However, Glen Close gave a soft, angelic voice to Kala that only a mother could have and her bond with both the child and adult Tarzan was at the emotional soul of the film. This was contradicted perfectly by Henriksen's performance as the un-accepting and judgmental ape leader Kurchack. Jane, Tantor, Turk were all great characters that all did well with adding humor at the appropriate times and what I liked about Driver's performance was that she was neither the defiant heroine nor the damsel in distress but rather she was simply a girl who had come to an untamed land and became enchanted with the world of a man she would later fall in love with. I would even go as far as to say that Jane is one of Disney's best female leads.I also give the movie points for the animations, most adaptations would have Tarzan swinging through the trees, but here he actually surfs through the trees.However, I do feel that the villain (voiced by Brian Blessed) was slightly weak in comparison to other characters, Clayton is not very interesting in terms of motivation but I do feel he could have been more unique if he had been made to look younger, I would have preferred to see him have the looks of say John Smith from Pocahontas, he just seemed quite forgettable but held up in the film's final third. I also feel the film would have been more effective if Sabor was given a speaking part. Simply having the leopard growl and roar seemed to make him a brainless carnivore as opposed to an enemy and in my humble opinion Sabor would have been more intimidating if the had a speaking role to match his ferocity.The film's strongest point was it's music and Phil Collins and Mark Mancina joined forces to create one of the greatest soundtracks I have heard in a very long time. With the exception of "Trashing the camp" which was sung by Turk, Collins used his actual voice for all of the songs and tunes such as "Son of Man" or "Strangers like me" or the Oscar winning "You'll be in my heart" will all go down as classics and give the film for being original and not sticking to the traditional musical tone.As one of the final traditionally animated films to be considered a hit, and is probably the greatest depiction of the story of Tarzan ever put on the big screen. An absolute must see.
FairlyAnonymous Tarzan is a beautifully animated film (or at least the hand-drawn segments, but we will get to that later) and it has some of the fastest and most fluid movement from a Disney film in a very long time. The action and the pacing is very nice and the colors are all very vibrant, with very nice shading to boot. The human characters are also half of the fun of this movie. Just the way they move and how fast everyone interacts with each other is entertaining.However, Tarzan is not without some fairly major flaws.The biggest problem is the movie's plot. I know this is going off of some old material, but they aren't even following the original story very closely so it could've been improved. You can see where the movie is going almost a mile away and it has the same old cliché: "I'm a protective father who is super conservative and old fashioned and won't risk my people for your ways" kind of deal. This kind of thing has been done more frequently AFTER this film was released, but it wasn't an uncommon theme beforehand... I mean... Pocahontas. And of course you know Tarzan is going to do something that will make everyone mad at him, but then Tarzan will have to redeem himself and... you get the drift. Fortunately, this movie is so fast paced that it doesn't even get caught in those boring details and these clichés wizz by super fast. All in all, Tarzan's plot is very weak and the bad guy is... hilariously obvious and I'm even more surprised that Jane and her father didn't even notice how obsessed he was with gorillas... not even slightly suspicious. Overall, I like Clayton's design and his character, but he isn't a truly deep or interesting villain.Regardless of the villain, the other characters have a lot of issues. Almost every character in this movie is a one-dimensional or a two-dimensional character. You have some depth with Tarzan, and maybe a little bit with Jane, but because the movie thinks that montages are equivalent to character development, you never really get any on- screen development. You see the characters before and after the development, but rarely during. This hurts Jane's and Tarzan's relationship the most. In Aladdin it kind of worked because Jasmine already kind of liked Aladdin and recognized that it was probably him. They already had chemistry between each other and they sang a duet. However, when the Tarzan equivalent is a montage and the only romantic part is roughly 20 seconds long... you have almost no chemistry.All of the human characters seemed to have been cast fairly well (not sure about Tarzan, but he sounds fine) but a lot of the animal characters sound... not like their animated characters. Tarzan's "father" has a voice that sounds a little too high and clear for someone who is supposed to be a massive, giant, powerful gorilla. Terk's gender is almost impossible to tell until you watch the movie long enough. Almost everyone I know who has seen this movie thought Terk was a boy. And there are a couple of other examples of voices that don't seem to fit their characters.The hand-drawn animation in this movie is fantastic. There is no arguing it is some of Disney's best as far as individual characters go. However, almost everything outside of the characters is CGI or painted background... on a CGI plane. This sounds like a minor complaint, but it becomes rather annoying when you start to feel like you are watching a CGI film with hand-drawn characters instead of a hand-drawn film with CGI elements. Now, regarding the soundtrack... this is probably the most infamous aspect of this movie... the Phil Collins soundtrack. Don't get me wrong, there are MOMENTS in the songs that work perfectly with the visual imagery. There are times where the music lines up with the atmosphere but... it sounds so ridiculous and over the top that it makes it hard to take the movie seriously. This is much like the voice-casting of the movie: In some areas it works, in other areas it makes absolutely no sense.That actually sums up the movie pretty well: A movie that knows what it is doing in some areas, and has absolutely no idea in other areas. Certain scenes/songs come completely out of nowhere and are merely filler, almost all character development happens over montages, the animation is split between CGI and hand-drawn, half of the characters are voiced nicely while the other half aren't, and sometimes the movie is nicely paced while other times it is incredibly rushed. This is a movie that could've been much more entertaining than it was and much more interesting, but it falls into so many clichés and generic story-telling elements that it doesn't feel like a really special film.