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Forget Space Mountain, Uncle Walt's cryogenically frozen body, dancing teacups, and Buzz Lightyear. The most amazing technical achievement yet to come out of the Disney machine is - ta da - mind control. I mean, what else could be going on when you attend an opening weekend show of Tarzan at ten p.m., thinking the later hour will mean fewer kids present - not that I have anything against children, but my critical assessment of a movie is hampered somewhat if I have to pick JujuFruit out of my hair and continually listen to the toddler next to me wonder aloud, "Where's he going now? What's he doing now? Can I have a monkey for Christmas?" - and the place still looks like a sweatshop on Sesame Street? I was surrounded by a swarm of size minus-3 Nikes long past their healthful bedtime threatening to scream "CHILD ABUSE!" if Daddy wouldn't pony up for a few action figures from the 24-hour Toys R Us on the way home. How did they all know to come here? It goes beyond advertising; Tarzan hype hasn't saturated the media enough to account for it. The Disney people must have hit upon some heretofore unknown and still secret phenomenon, such as crayon waves or graham particles or flannel plasma, which allows them to summon children on a frequency undetectable by any adult except Howie Mandel.
But that's okay. Because Tarzan is the kind of adventurous entertainment children should see now and then, and that a less-than-adequately-supervised houseful of them couldn't keep me from enjoying, too. Edgar Rice Burroughs' character, adapted to film more times than any other literary invention besides Dracula, gets from Disney's latest animation processes a realization the author would have approved of. Employing their new Deep Canvas software to lend even greater depth and breadth to the lush jungle backdrop, and the visual, kinetic humor they do better than anyone else (whether on film or in theme parks), the Florida crew (including, coincidentally, a writer who worked on Gorillas in the Mist) have fashioned the most thrilling action sequences ever animated. (It's still too easy to spot scenes where computer animation doesn't blend as well with traditional style, but the fusion of the two continues to improve.) No joke, the arboreal chase scenes will knock you backwards like the first time you saw the jump to light speed on the big screen in Star Wars.
All of which work together to make telling the story of a child raised to manhood by apes more intriguing. Rescued from the leopard that killed his shipwrecked parents by a gorilla (voiced by Glenn Close, who also coincidentally re-recorded Andie MacDowell's dialogue in the reasonably faithful film version Greystoke after the director found her Gaffney-accented Jane too Southern) whose baby has also been taken, Tarzan struggles for acceptance among his new species, aided by his wisecracking (and sometimes annoying) ape-cousin Terk (Rosie O'Donnell). Barely tolerated by his adoptive father (Lance Henriksen), the tribe's leader, he begins to make up in inventive intelligence, bravery, and skilled mimicry what he can't quite match in their physical strength and agility (though he still emulates their locomotion pretty well). No plodding Johnny Weismuller monosyllabic pidgin for this Mr. T. He surfs through the trees, talks to the animals (unlike Dr. Doolittle's pals, these animals have something intelligent to say), and picks up the Queen's English just fine when Jane (Minne Driver) and her professorial father (Nigel Hawthorne) show up looking to study the apes but find an ape-man instead. Drawn to the winsome, anime-eyed beauty, and realizing at last he's not the only one of his kind, Tarzan must decide whether he's going to stay in the jungle or head off to Victorian London. Complicating things further, the humans' muscle-bound, trigger-happy guide Clayton (Brian Blessed, who just voiced Gungan leader Boss Nass in The Phantom Menace) is a slimy sort who you know is up to no good.
Though it boasts plenty lightheartedness, Tarzan also contains several scenes of surprisingly grave, though discreet, stuff that adults will appreciate. They'll also likely enjoy the music, which rather than the usual Broadway-ready in-show cast numbers sung by dancing animals comprises catchy new background songs and percussive instrumentals from Phil Collins.
Disney has done it again: come up with a summer masterpiece that magically sends everybody from the theater feeling like they've put one over on the unequally-aged person in the next seat, thought both generations will be squeezing the armrests for dear life. And for the first time in my life, I can think of someone as a knuckle-dragger and not have it be a pejorative term. A-
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