From the USA's most respected paper:
"Disney's dazzling new "Tarzan" breaks through cinematic boundaries. Words can't match the brilliance of the pictures or the power of the music":
(In other words, Tarzan is ineffable)
June 18, 1999
Film
It May Seem a Bit Wild,
But 'Tarzan' Is Terrific
By JOE MORGENSTERN
How right it is, and how sweet it is, that Walt Disney's dazzling new "Tarzan" finds time for Jane to show her jungle beau the flickering images inside a zoetrope's spinning drum. Zoetrope machines were a crucial part of the dawn of cinema, and "Tarzan" is a showcase for what motion pictures can do in the here and now. Motion is the key word. Never has an animated feature seemed more animated by sheer kinetic joy. "I'll be the best ape ever," Tarzan vows as an overachieving kid -- it's tough to be the only Homo sapiens on your block -- but he grows up to be the best athlete ever. This guy swings, slides, leaps, flies and glides as no screen hero has done before.
Mostly he tree-surfs; that's the term given to Tarzan's arboreal travels by the animator who created him, Glen Keane. Mr. Keane has spoken of taking inspiration from his son's skateboarding, and allied sports, and it's clear that "Tarzan," from its treetops to its taproots, is the work of individual artists, unencumbered by corporate caution. (Its co-directors are Kevin Lima and Chris Buck.) The whole movie swings, from satisfyingly scary (Tarzan's face-off with Sabor the tiger) through charmingly silly (a chaotic dance as a bunch of no-account apes and a neurotic elephant wreck a human camp) to quietly witty ("I'm in a tree with a man who talks to monkeys," Jane declares with baffled delight).
Words can't match the brilliance of the pictures, or the power of the music -- lovely songs and great drumming by Phil Collins, a background score by Mark Mancina. Still, the script, by Bob Tzudiker and Noni White, stirs us with Tarzan's oft-told evolution from trans-species adoptee to natural-born lover who finds the smart, spunky beauty he deserves. And it puts good words into the mouths of fine actors: Tony Goldwyn as Tarzan (who's not just a bodybuilder but, with his anvil-shaped face, a jaw-builder); Minnie Driver as Jane; Glenn Close as Kala, Tarzan's nurturing gorilla mother; Lance Henriksen as Kerchak, his remote and withholding gorilla father; Nigel Hawthorne as Jane's father, Prof. Porter; Rosie O'Donnell as Terk, Tarzan's best buddy; Brian Blessed as Clayton, a Barrymore-esque explorer; and Wayne Knight as the pachyderm Tantor. At one point Jane tells Tarzan he has "no respect for personal boundaries." The movie has no respect for cinematic boundaries. Breaking through them, it sets new ones to be broken.
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And all sans Katzenberg! |
