TARZAN
Disney's animated take on Edgar Rice
Burroughs' novels about the Lord of the Apes outclasses the live-action
interpretations of the character (including the steamy Tarzan
and His Mate, starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan)
in the same way Batman: The Animated Series reigns supreme
over the dumbed-down live-action Batman movies. Animation
is the perfect medium for Tarzan (voiced by Tony Goldwyn, who
does a great Tarzan yell that rivals Carol Burnett's). Supervising
animator Glen Keane's designs for Tarzan — as well as an
innovative and effective digital animation process known as "Deep
Canvas" — capture the speed and agility of the ape-man's
movements like no other screen version, not even the '30s movies
that starred athletes like Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe.
The script by Tab Murphy, who co-wrote
another film about a human who finds a surrogate family in simians,
Gorillas in the Mist, is even more surprising than the
stunning animation (though it's saddled with Disney clichés
like a boring Snidely Whiplash-style villain and unfunny animal
sidekicks). It deepens Burroughs' superhero and portrays him as
intelligent rather than simple-minded, for a change. Tarzan's
first half-hour details the character's origins as an orphan raised
in the jungle by a family of apes led by kindly mother Kala (voice
of Glenn Close) and hard-to-please father Kerchak (voice of Lance
Henriksen). The young ape-man's world is completely free of humans
until it's visited by an expedition led by spunky, amiable British
primatologist Jane Porter (voice of Minnie Driver) and her dotty
professor father (voice of Nigel Hawthorne).
Tarzan falls for Jane and has to choose
between staying with his surrogate family and leaving them behind
to join Jane and learn more about civilization. Luckily, the audience
is spared an insipid musical number where Tarzan gazes up at the
sky and sings in flawless English about his identity crisis. But
Phil Collins' atrocious pop songs are not much of an improvement
over the Disney show tunes. I'd rather hear that kitschy 1985
pop hit "Tarzan Boy" on the soundtrack than one of Collins'
toothless adult-contemporary tunes. Disney's feature has won some
praise for not having any of the African-bashing that's typical
of the Tarzan franchise. But if the movie is set in Africa, then
where the hell are all the Africans?
© 1999 Jim Aquino