Tarzan 1999

[6.1/10] Tarzan marks the end of the Disney renaissance, the brilliant stretch at The House of Mouse that began with 1989’s The Little Mermaid and featured a murderers row of lavishly-animated musical epics with wacky sidekicks and protagonists who learn to be who and what they truly wanted. The studio would eventually pick that idea back up in computer animation, but this movie marks an end point for arguably Disney’s most creatively fertile period ever.

And it’s an example of how much the studio had all but totally worn out this blueprint and could no longer tape it back together. So much in Tarzan feels like a patchwork quilt of other, better, more complete Disney Renaissance films.

There’s liberal doses of The Lion King, from the animal kingdom and “protect the pride” bona fides, to the resemblance Terk and Tantor bear to Timon and Pumba, to Tarzan’s rain-soaked succession to being the leader of his tribe. There’s loads of influence from Pocahontas, in the way of one shore-bound civilization meeting a colonizing one with the inevitable mistrust and ill-dealing, the protagonist slipping away and exploring rather than following the rest of the tribe, and an antagonist who’s basically Governor Radcliffe with a generous dash of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast.

That’s before you get to Jane’s bumbling dad, cut from the same cloth as The Sultan in Aladdin, or Tarzan and Jane’s seaside embrace, reminiscent of The Little Mermaid, or even Tarzan’s trademark acrobatics, which bear more than a little resemblance to a certain street rat and even Quasimodo swinging from the bells. Even accepting that this film is an adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic and thus must hit certain iconic notes, so much of it feels like an unoriginal and derivative amalgamation of other Disney highlights.

The real shame of that is that there’s a powerful story to be told here, one that directors Kevin Lima and Chris Buck almost pull off. The opening ten minutes, while not quite as efficiently devastating as Up, still twist the knife and tug the heartstrings extremely well. The story of a mother losing her child, a baby losing its parents, and the mutual need fulfilled and solace offered when they find one another is both dark and heartening for a Disney flick. The issues that would cause for both mother and child, especially when Tarzan’s adoptive father refuses to accept him, are especially potent.

That’s where the power of Tarzan comes from. It is a story of adoption, the difficulty of finding your place in the world when you constantly feel your differences made manifest, and the strange, unsolvable conflicts of whether your heritage or your upbringing in the “real” you. When the movie leans into that concept and the emotional force that comes with it, it soars (or swings). But when it imitates other films, down to the zany comedy and tacked on love story, it loses that compelling psychological throughline and plays like a pale imitation.

It doesn't help that the concept of Tarzan’s familial relationships, and his difficult but yearning-filled connection to his gorilla brethren, are dramatized much better and much more thoroughly than his comparatively glancing connections to humanity.

Tarzan’s mom, Kala, is the heart of the film, providing him comfort in his most difficult times, providing his firmest connection to his adopted people, and anchoring the warmest and most lived-in relationship in the film. Glen Close does incredible work, conveying a courage and care that sells the maternal bond at stake. By the same token, the harshness of Kerchak, the gorilla tribe’s leader, as a withholding father figure, counterbalances Kala’s compassion, and adds further ballast to the picture. Sure, it’s a standard issue daddy issues story, but Tarzan nearly gaining, nearly losing completely, and finally earning for good his father’s acceptance and blessing, it has power by how surprisingly grounded and relatable that mirror image feels.

The problem is that you can’t say the same for Tarzan’s pull toward humanity. The equal orbital pull is supposed to be Jane, the female version of Hugh Grant romantic lead who stammers and fumfers and is supposed to come off as that sort of charmingly flustered that makes you forget the movie hasn’t really developed her as a character. This is Disney, so a certain amount of insta-love is to be expected (and it was firmly present in The Little Mermaid), but when it’s supposed to be the thing that pushes Tarzan toward the human side he never knew, and it feels slight and insubstantial, that massively weakens the movie.

Frankly, that goes for pretty much anything that isn’t Tarzan’s parental issues and more internal sense of being from, say it with me now, two worlds. The film barrels through all of its plot with little time for the characters or the audience to stop and process anything that happens. With montage after montage after montage, Tarzan learns how to scrap and get along and thrive like an animal, he learns to speak like a human, and any number of other sundry major life events that the movie yada yada yadas its way through instead of exploring.

But maybe that blur-inducing pacing is a good thing. Otherwise, we would be subject to more of Phil Collins’s auditory assaults. Each tune he contributes nearly stops the movie dead in its tracks. I don’t know what boomer fanboys thought that what a movie from 1999 needs is a spate of 1980s ballads, but they were painfully wrong. That’s matched by the tepid attempts at comedy from Terk and Tantor as the sidekicks, with Rosie O’Donnell’s shtick in particular veering far more into “grating” territory than “funny” territory.

That’s a shame, because it detracts from the movie’s incredible animation. I would almost recommend just playing your favorite record and watching this one on mute. Tarzan swings and slides through the jungle like a creature possessed, communicating with his body language the space he occupies between animal and man. The jungle setting is awash in cool blue pallets in easy times, and frightening red hues when tempers flare. Hair and leaves and water all react to the wind and rain and other forces in a fashion that’s artistic but convincing. And the way that each of these figures moves through this space is so demonstrative and fluid and expressive. Whatever the film’s other faults, Tarzan may very well be the peak of the Disney Renaissance in terms of pure aesthetics.

It just fails to live up to that legacy in terms of story or character or the other intangible, ineffable qualities that made it so easy to be moved by the studio’s greatest triumph in this golden decade. For as great a tale as Tarzan starts to spin with a boy, and eventually a man, struggling with his self-identity when torn between the community he knows and the one he might have known, it squanders it with rushed plotting, quickly extinguished threats, and other dutifully deployed Disney tropes that fail to achieve the same impact on the tenth go-round.

By 1999, it was time for the Mouse to move on. The era that followed this film was not nearly as successful as the one it closed out, but it was also a necessary correction and bit of soul-searching for Disney. The old playbook had lost its luster and new ideas needed to flourish for the studio to do the same. Tarzan is proof of that -- a hodgepodge of elements from past successes, lacking the greater soul that elevated them, tinged with enough boldness and complexity to point the way forward, but crumpling under the weight of ten years of Renaissance expectations in one disappointing last gasp.