Movie Thoughts: Tarzan (1999)

• Released: 18 July 1999
• Directed by: Chris Buck, Kevin Lima
• Running time: 1 hr 28 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A man raised by gorillas must decide where his heart lies: with the apes who raised him or the humans he grew to care about.

My Thoughts

Tarzan is one of those movies I just kind of think is...good. Nothing more and nothing less. I definitely like it more than Hercules, but aside from that I really don't appreciate it that much more, either.

I don't know what it is. I definitely don't have any nostalgia for this movie, so that might be holding me back, but at the same time that didn't stop me from enjoying Disney Renaissance movies I only saw for the first time in my late teens/adulthood, such as The Little Mermaid, Mulan and Aladdin. With Tarzan, despite it objectively being good, I just don't really care about the film.

The characters are decent, particularly Jane, who is all kinds of adorable. The visuals are absolutely fantastic, with the deep canvas tree-shredding scenes and 2D-animation looking beautiful. The relationships between the characters feel genuine, especially Tarzan and Kala and Tarzan and Jane. I also like the music (and, no, I don't have a problem with the characters not singing them). So what exactly is holding me back from forming an actual attachment to this film, I don't know.

There's definitely some less-good elements. The villain is pretty lame, Terk can be annoying and I really didn't care for the Big-Lipped Alligator moment where all the animals play a random music song on the humans' stuff. But even these factors aren't big enough to make me call it "bad".

So, yeah, don't have much to say her. Good movie, but I just can't really appreciate it all that much for whatever reason. 

And with that, I've finished the Disney Renaissance. It's been some journey. Now I guess it's time to move on to the Experimental Era, which has some interesting movies, to say the least. Next up for me to watch (watch only, not review, since I don't review the non-fully fledged story/package Disney movies) is Fantasia 2000, which I'm not looking forward to that much since I didn't particularly care for the OG Fantasia. After that we'll be diving into the Experimental Era, though, starting with Dinosaur. I think it'd be neat if I'd have caught up to all the Disney movies currently out minus the early ones I skipped over to review later before the end of the year.