Tarzan (Blu-ray + DVD)

The movie is faithful to the original story, but set in the present with a SciFi bent. I was afraid it would be a little too "cartoon like" and the first few minutes seemed to bear that out. However, it improved considerably as the story progressed. It became apparent that the movie was using motion capture of the characters. The extra features on the disk confirmed that. In fact, the voice actors of the main characters also did their own motion capture. The action moves at a good pace within a very detailed and lush jungle environment. It's a sweet love story ("Me Tarzan, you Jane" is in there) It has the requisite villains, both human and otherwise. All in all, an enjoyable movie.

Enjoyed this rendition of Tarzan, The animation was different and not quite what I expected but it still joy to watch with my kids.

First, this is NOT a "Tarzan" movie and so should not be labeled as such.. This story is about a little boy who was a Tarzan fan. He was orphaned in the jungle and ended up with a life that mirrors his hero, Tarzan. He takes the name of Tarzan after he is saved by a she-gorilla and further raised by the gorilla troop. In the original stories Tarzan was not raised by Gorillas ("Bolgani" in Burroughs' books) while he was raised by the "Mangani", generally interpreted as between the size of chimps and Gorillas. Little was known about the great apes at the time Tarzan was written. That certainly added to the excitement of the stories back then. Today, the knowledge we have of the apes is far different than Burroughs had. We know how violent the chimps can be and how gentle the gorillas are. We know the distribution of the various species of apes as well as other wildlife, so there is no excuse for movies to have the wrong animals on any given continent. This movie did get the animals geographically correct. That has never been done in any other "Tarzan" movie, except perhaps for Jock Mahoney's India adventure. I still await a Tarzan movie that is true to the stories while being geographically correct as to wildlife. All that said, I did enjoy the movie. I would recommend it but with the caveats mentioned.