Deborah Ross

Fresh and wild | 14 April 2016

Deborah Ross welcomes this dark remake of the animated classic, especially its lack of icky messages about belonging

issue 16 April 2016

This Jungle Book is Disney’s remake of its animated classic of 1967, as beloved by all generations thereafter. Warner Bros also has a remake in the pipeline, directed by Andy Serkis, and due for release in 2018, so it looks as though we’ve reached peak Jungle Book remake, although I personally won’t be happy until Quentin Tarantino has a shot: ‘I’ve reached the top, but had to stop and that’s what’s bothering me …mother fucker!’

Many are scornful of these ‘reimaginings’, as they’re called, saying it indicates that Hollywood lacks original ideas. There may be some truth in this, but if we only ever held out for original ideas, we’d never have had Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (a remake of the French film Fanfares of Love) or The Maltese Falcon, which had been adapted twice before, and which no one has ever understood, but is considered a classic all the same.

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