YMMV / Jungle Book

• Ending Fatigue: The first batch of Mowgli stories ends with Mowgli killing Shere Khan in their Final Battle, which leads to a Bittersweet Ending as he is alienated from his village and the wolf pack as a result. However this film continues after Shere Khan's death, incorporating multiple elements from The Second Jungle Book, shifting the focus to three of the villagers following Mowgli to a lost city in order to steal treasure from it, which results in them killing each other until one is left, and the survivor Buldeo, who is revealed to be the narrator and villain, goes insane and sets the jungle (and accidentally the village) on fire, and the story ends after everyone escapes the fire and Mowgli decides to stay in the jungle. This is even lampshaded by Mowgli himself, who believed killing Shere Khan, which had been his main goal of the movie, would resolve everything and finally bring peace to both the jungle and the village, and even when he is facing execution as the village believes he is a sorcerer, he is at peace with it as he had killed Shere Khan, his primary goal, before his mother frees him.
• Fridge Logic: Buldeo is both the narrator and (obviously) the main villain of the story, and the last thing anyone would expect for him is to be a deceiving Unreliable Narrator who tries to paint himself in a more positive light. But instead, Buldeo truthfully confesses his terrible acts as a ruthless villain while telling the story to the people (including a British woman and an army officer), so the question is why would he want to do that? And for that matter, how did he knew that Mowgli was commanding the animals rather turning into them?
• He Really Can Act: An uncredited Mel Blanc gives an unrecognizable performance as Kaa, in contrast to some of his other voices which tend to overlap.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The film spends a good ten minutes on an Info Dump about the various animals living in the jungle, then five more minutes on showing the human settlers building the Man-Village, before Shere Khan kills Mowgli's father and Mowgli gets adopted by the wolves.
• Special Effects Failure: Due to the technical limitations of the time, a lot of the direct interactions between the human characters and the wild animals end up being this.
  • The two most notable examples are when Mowgli kills Shere Khan while underwater, which looks like Sabu is wrestling with a giant plush toy, and later, when Buldeo confronts him but gets pounced on by Bagheera, it’s accomplished via throwing another stiff, plush toy-looking prop at the actor. Needless to say, it’s pure Narm for a modern viewer.
  • Likewise, Kaa, White Hood, and the mugger crocodile are all played by very jerky and cheap-looking animatronics that resemble something straight out of an old theme park ride.

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