Awesome Music: "George! George! George of the Jungle! Strong as he can be!"
Crosses the Line Twice: The Oo-oo birds getting their feathers plucked. It's animal abuse, but their cries of "Oo-oo!" are still hilarious.
First Installment Wins: You'd have a hell of a time trying to find anyone who doesn't consider this to be the one entry in the franchise that holds up on all fronts.
Lady Mondegreen: The original theme song contains the line "...while Fella and Ursula stay in step." This line is often misheard as "...while Bella and Ursula stay in step." Justified because two women who look like identical twins show up when this line is uttered, but both of them are actually Ursula, and there is no "Bella" in the original show. The creators of the 2008 and 2015 revivals were apparently confused as well, since they actually introduced a new character (though she was called Magnolia, or "Maggie" for short, rather than Bella), and the theme song was changed to reflect this. Some fans have speculated that the second woman was part of an unused plot line; had there been a second season, she might have been meant as an identical relative.
Visual Effects of Awesome: The series' animation was well above its time, with a ridiculously smooth framerate and fewer errors than what contemporary cartoons showed at the time. Unfortunately, this ended up as the show's downfall, as the producers were so impressed by the quality that the animators were regularly allowed to go over budget, cutting the series short due to a lack of available funding.
Tropes for the 1997 Live-Action movie:
Adaptation Displacement: Far more people are familiar with this movie than the animated series it is based on.
Alternative Character Interpretation: At the risk of ruining a funny joke... early on in the film, only one of the four African guides seems to be able to speak English, despite it being confirmed that the other three can at least understand it note It is possible to understand a language without being able to speak it—it's called receptive bilingualism. Midway through the film, when the trio reveal that they can speak it, their boss, Kwame, gives them a look. Whether this is a look of genuine surprise that they actually can speak English or annoyance that they had ruined a long-standing joke they were playing on Lyle is up to the viewer to decide.
From the OST, George To The Rescue / George Runs is a majestically and straightforwardly heroic theme for George as he races across the African landscape to save Ape. In fact, it's such a memorable piece of music that it was used for one of the trailers for The Emperor's New Groove.
The four African guides are widely agreed to have stolen the entire movie.
And the narrator.
And for the major players, the Ape named Ape. Admit it, we all fell for this guy's Deadpan Snarker antics.
Ham and Cheese: Everybody involved knows full well that they're in a live-action cartoon where realism is basically non-existent and commit to the material with everything they have, making it very enjoyable if you approach it with the same mindset.
George usually crashes into trees. Brendan Fraser almost lost his career during the 2000s, among other reasons, because of a series of chronic injuries from performing his own stunts. Luckily, his career would make a comeback in 2023.
This wouldn't be the last time Brendan Fraser or Leslie Mann appeared in Jay Ward film adaptations. Two years later, Fraser would portray the title character in Dudley Do-Right, while it took Mann 17 years before she would appear in another piece of Ward's works where she would voice Mrs. Peterson in DreamWorks Animation's Mr. Peabody & Sherman.
Additionally, Thomas Haden Church managed to play the villain in a Jay Ward adaptation starring Brendan Fraser before he went on to portray a Spider-Man villain, a feat shared by Alfred Molina. Molina and Church were also in the Spider-Man Trilogy.
Love to Hate: Lyle is an absolutely colossal jerk and not a scene goes by without him being controlling, cowardly, smarmy, condescending and just an all-around dreadful human being. But Thomas Haden Church's wonderfully loathsome performance and commitment to making Lyle as awful as possible as well as him getting smacked around by karma at every chance make him a delight to watch.
"Now comes the part where we throw our heads back and laugh! Ready? READY! AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Twenty years after the movie hit theaters, this line is still being used to make fun of people hurting/making fools of themselves. Here it is◊ in useful GIF form.
"This hurt George. But George not care."
The theme. WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!
So Okay, It's Average: The general view of the Disney film. Most of the praise goes to the film at least being faithful to its source material and Brendan Fraser's immensely charming performance.
Took the Bad Film Seriously: The 1997 film is a live-action cartoon, but Brendan Fraser realized that George needed to be someone the audience would root for so he put in a lot of work to portray the character as a good-hearted innocent who wished no one harm and giving him layers of emotional intelligence and chivalry to make him more than just dumb muscle. Because of this, he cites the film as an important learning experience in character development.
Values Resonance: The film makes for a surprisingly in depth study of positive masculinity versus toxic masculinity in its portrayals of George and Lyle and how what seems like one type may be another. George seems the typical savage at first glance but quickly shows himself as kind, respectful, emotionally intelligent and a heroic man who loves helping others just because he can and loves Ursula for her personality and intelligence. In contrast, Lyle seems more cultured and well-educated but repeatedly shows himself to be dismissive to Ursula, condescending, incredibly full of himself and rude to others, a complete coward and who only seems to like Ursula for status reasons.
Tropes for the 2003 Live-Action movie sequel:
Special Effects Failure: The Direct to Video sequel was made on a lower budget, and nowhere is this more evident than in the special effects for the jungle creatures. The gorilla suits have less facial expression than those in the original, while the poor lighting and textures on the CGI animals make them look like plastic toys superimposed on top of the scenes.
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