Terk is an anachronistic character who doesn’t fit in! One minute she’s trying to assert how Tarzan isn’t her best friend during a childhood sequence, and then she’s upset over his leaving her. I’ve never understood why movies believe inserting a character with a thick New Jersey or Brooklyn accent equals instant humor. Unfortunately, Terk and Tantor are a discount Timon and Pumbaa, but with an enhanced annoyance factor. Sure, Tarzan has two friends named Terk (voiced by Rosie O’Donnell) and Tantor (voiced by Wayne Knight) but that’s minor for a Disney movie. I will say the script curtails the use of cuddly side characters that was growing to critical mass in past efforts. Her ad-libbed description of Tarzan is filled with interjections including the capper “And Daddy! They took my boot!” I just wanted her to do something, anything other than cry, fall down, and swoon over Tarzan.
#TARZAN 1999 DRIVER#
And while Minnie Driver is a cute Jane, she’s purely something for Tarzan to rescue and fall in love with! What, because the main character is a male that means we can’t have an equally engaging female? Driver is great with her vocal performance. (There is a leopard that threatens the apes and Tarzan’s parents, who I assumed with a formidable foe, but he’s dispatched within the first thirty minutes.) It’s a shame that Blessed doesn’t get to go as wild as past villains. Blessed’s voice, and the character, hew closer to George Sanders voicing of Shere Khan from The Jungle Book. However, Clayton doesn’t show any affection for Jane and treats her no different from her father. Clayton and Gaston are complimentary to each other both are tall, strapping men with congruent facial features and a one-track mind. I do admire Disney for not drawing Clayton from the same pool as Gaston, which I expected upon first seeing the character. By the same token, Jane, her father and game hunter, Clayton (voiced by Shakespearean legend Brian Blessed) are underdeveloped Jane is the girl, her father the buffoon and Clayton the villain. Tarzan is animated with an interesting array of human and ape characteristics, but that’s all. Tony Goldwyn’s Tarzan isn’t a big talker, so there’s nothing for him to provide in terms of vocal quality. The characters are also fairly one-note, with no one character doing much to separate themselves from the herd. The colors are suitably dark or light depending on the time day, and the characters are drawn well – especially Tarzan whose body could only be designed through animation – but the backgrounds feel muted and uninspired there’s only so many ways you can draw foliage, but even when Tarzan looks back at the island from a boat, it’s a rather flat and typical representation of an island, lacking the punch of either 2D or 3D. For 1999 it was a way to separate itself from the dearth of animated films out there, and return Disney to being innovators of animation, but it creates a rather blah film to look at. The claim to fame with Tarzan was the revolutionary process of Deep Canvas wherein two-dimensional animation was integrated seamlessly into a three-dimensional background.
#TARZAN 1999 MOVIE#
Counting on Burroughs turned out to be a blessing because this was the first Disney movie to go to number one since Pocahontas (we loved outdoor movies about prejudice in our 90s animation). (It’s up there with Dracula as one of the most adapted sources). The Edgar Rice Burroughs story about a man growing up amongst apes has been adapted countless times. When a bumbling scientist and his daughter, Jane (voiced by Minnie Driver) come upon Tarzan, the ape-man must come to understand his identity. Raised by apes in the jungle, Tarzan (voiced by Tony Goldwyn) struggles to assert himself despite the protestations of ape leader Kerchak (voiced by Lance Henriksen). Tarzan ends up being a soundtrack with a translucent plot spliced in. Although not nearly as devastating to the film as the use of Billy Joel in Oliver and Company, Tarzan has some jarring musical cues to introduce the Phil Collins soundtrack which starts to sound like one song on a loop by the end. What ends up bringing Tarzan down to a lower-tier Disney flick is the soundtrack. Watching it now Tarzan has some worthy animation, and somewhat decent (although vastly underwritten) characters the use of “ Deep Canvas” animation is also unique to look at, although we lose a lot of the fine details Disney’s known for. I avoided Tarzan when it came out initially, mainly because the Tarzan story didn’t appeal to me and because Disney had mined similar territory two years prior with George of the Jungle. This, as well as the next two weeks worth of Disney movies, will be first-time viewings for me which should spark interesting discussions in the comments.