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Right off the bat, let’s get into my favorite thing about this movie. Not the story, or the characters or the gorgeous animation; I’m talking about Phil Phreaking Collins. Now that it seems OK to admit to liking his music, I’ll say that this is one of the few Disney films that I love to crank the volume up when I watch. Admittedly, having the Chiswick-born writer of “Sussudio” write and perform the music for the Africa-set film seems like an odd choice (such were the wacky machinations of the late Eisner era,) but the rhythmic instrumentations created by Collins and composer Mark Mancina actually compliment the on-screen action well. The music’s also great to play on my way home from work, driving my Scion with good gas-mileage while loosening the collar on my non-descript polo shirt and guzzling my not-too-hot pumpkin spice latte (White Card Obtained!)
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| DA-DUM, DA-DUM, ba-dum, ba-dum - BUM BUM |
As noted, the animation is gorgeous, perhaps representing the pinnacle of Disney’s hand-drawn animation technique (along with the following year’s Fantasia 2000.) Much ballyhooed at the time of release, the film’s usage of the Academy Award-winning “deep canvas” technology allows characters to move freely through 3D rendered backgrounds, and adds a visceral thrill to some of the action-oriented sequences. Looking at it now, it seems like a sort-of bridge between hand-drawn and CG animation.
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| My wife's favorite Character Meet-and-Greet (besides Captain America) |
The characters are, for the most part, engaging and entertaining. Tarzan himself (voiced by Tony Goldwyn as an adult and Alex D. Linz as a child,) while not necessarily identifiable to audiences, gains a lot of warmth early on as we see him grow from infant to man (a conceit that will become pretty repetitive for Disney in the 2010s.) Minnie Driver’s performance as Jane is nuanced and entertaining, though for me her unique (and somewhat deep) voice distracted from the character every once in a while. Brian Blessed appears as Clayton, his mahogany-rich voice well suited to the great white hunter who gets possibly the most gruesome death in the animated canon (and is it just me, or does Clayton’s vine-entanglement remind anyone else of The Evil Dead? No?)
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| I'll swallow your soul! |
In the end, what doesn’t lift the film as high as some of its predecessors is its lack of experimentation. After Disney animation came roaring back with their back-to-back fairy tales The Little Mermaid and Beauty And The Beast, Robin Williams-carried Aladdin and the unique storyline of The Lion King, the studio began to rely a bit too heavily on its new-found formulas. There simply had to be a main character that was a fish-out-of-water, befriended by wacky sidekicks, who finds strength and acceptance through a new love. While not sunk so badly by this formula-adherence as 1996’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tarzan could have been a much better movie than it turned out had the filmmakers dropped or tweaked the formula just a little.
Good examples of this are Tarzan’s two wacky friends, Terk the ape and Tantor the elephant (voiced by Rosie O’Donnell and Wayne Knight, respectively). While neither character is especially annoying, and both actors deliver fine comedic performances, they never bring their own outlook to the story, or add to Tarzan’s arc beyond a bit of “we’ve got your back, buddy” reassurance. All fine and good, but with only forced, so-so humor, these characters are just … there. It’s as if the filmmakers had a pre-assigned checklist they had to fulfill in order to get their movie made, whether or not the story benefitted.
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| You're a loser ... a real loser ... |
A decent hit upon release, the movie has fallen by the wayside when people discuss Disney’s 90s animated output. The Walt Disney Company itself never really pushes the film whenever they trot out their legacy animated releases; no doubt because Terk and Tantor plush doesn’t fly off the shelves like Simba and Flounder do. Like most of the animated canon by this point, there are things that work well and others that don’t, and when one doesn’t outweigh the other, the resulting product ends up falling into the category of “good, but not too memorable.”
Next time, we’ll conclude the Lima trilogy with a live-action/animated hybrid. Get your massive princess dresses prepped and ready!
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