The Jungle Book (2016) is the 163rd episode of Screen Junkies comedy series Honest Trailers. It was written by Spencer Gilbert, Dan Murrell, Joe Starr and Andy Signore. It parodies the 2016 live-action film adaptation of The Jungle Book. It was narrated by Jon Bailey as Epic Voice Guy. It was published on August 23, 2016, to coincide with the film's release on home video and Blu-ray.. It is 5 minutes 20 seconds long. It has been viewed over 3.7 million times.
Watch Honest Trailers - The Jungle Book (2016) on YouTube
"Pull up your red diaper and join the pack for this well-written, visually stunning, action-packed movie." ~ Honest Trailers - The Jungle Book (2016)
Script[]
From Jon Favreau, the guy who went from playing Mike in Swingers to becoming one of today's best directors, to one of the worst, to one of the best again, comes the year's best film about talking animals...which is really saying something because there's been, like, ten of 'em already (shows posters for Zootopia, The Secret Life of Pets, Ice Age: Collision Course, Nine Lives, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Kung Fu Panda 3, The Angry Birds Movie, and Finding Dory), and the year's not even done yet.
The Jungle Book
Disney is remaking all their animated classics into live-action movies (compares remakes to originals with Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and Pete's Dragon), and Jungle Book was next on the spreadsheet. So pull up your red diaper and join the pack for this well-written, visually stunning, action-packed movie with great characters...? Look, I'm not gonna lie; this thing is way better than it deserved to be.
You remember loving the original animated Jungle Book, even though it's really not that good. Now, they're giving a new twist to an old classic: this one...has a plot. Follow along on a young man's search for acceptance in this winning combination of The Lion King, a Ben Kingsley nature documentary, and a kid-friendly version of The Revenant. Geez, I hope there's no deleted scene where he sleeps inside of a rhino.
Journey deep inside a downtown Los Angeles bluescreen studio, where a grown man spent months playing with a little boy in his underwear, that they turned into this...? (shows a scene from the film with natural-looking scenery and realistic animals) Holy crap. There, you'll meet Mowgli, a parkour-loving orphan MacGyver who must leave the safety of his family to escape Shere Khan, a scary f***ing tiger. Khan will do whatever it takes to keep his jungle safe, even if it turns him into a monster, while Mowgli will prove Shere Khan right by using man's destructive fire to stop him. So, wait, which one's wrong? This is a lot of depth for a kid's movie.
Enter a whole new world of Hollywood A-listers pretending to be animals who act just like those same Hollywood A-listers, like Baloo, a lovable old Bill Murray type; King Louie, a giant ape who appears whenever you play the cowbell...kind of like Christopher Walken; and Kaa, a boa constrictor with sexy exposition eyes who proves that, whether she's playing a killer alien (Under the Skin), a fancy iPod (Her), or a giant snake, Scarlett Johansson's voice will probably still turn you on.
Enjoy a remake that didn't just improve on the original story; they also cherry-picked the only two good songs, then, for some reason, give a classic like "Bare Necessities" to two people who can barely sing (shows Mowgli and Baloo singing "Bare Necessities" off-key) and turn "I Wan'na Be like You" into a Christopher Walken solo number, and we all know how that turns out (shows Christopher Walken "singing" during a live broadcast of Peter Pan).
Bill Murray: If they can make us sound good, you know, it's kind of a miracle.
So strap in for a movie full of incredible sets, photo-realistic animals, and the word "man-cub" (shows clips of characters saying "man-cub"), in a groundbreaking, definitive version of the story that's impossible to top, but Warner Bros. and Andy Serkis are gonna try in 2018 anyway, because God forbid a CGI movie come out that doesn't include Andy Serkis. Hey, hey, guys? Y'know, sometimes it's okay to just, y'know, like, not make a movie.
Starring One Real Boy (Neel Sethi as Mowgli), A Bunch of Random Guys in Blue Bodysuits, Other Guys in Motion-Capture Leotards, Cute Little Hand Puppets, Giant Creepy Puppet Heads, Even Creepier Puppeteers, A Log, Some Grass, Flatscreen Monitors, Very Temporary CGI, Jon Favreau Pretending to Be a Bear, and A Whole Lot of Bluuuuescreen.
Honest title for The Jungle Book (2016) - The Wrath of Shere Khan. Title design by Robert Holtby.
Jungle Book Too: The Wrath of Shere Khan
So, I know we mentioned it when we did the original, but Jungle Book 2 is totally gonna set up TaleSpin, right? Please?
Trivia[]
- Screen Junkies also produced an Honest Trailer for the 1967 animated version of The Jungle Book.
- Screen Junkies have produced Honest Trailers for several other Disney live-action reboots including Aladdin (2019), Maleficent, Beauty and the Beast and Alice in Wonderland. See list of Honest Trailers for more.
- An Honest Trailer Commentary for this episode was recorded and was available on the Screen Junkies Plus until the website/app was discontinued. Screen Junkies don't currently have any way of releasing the video.
Reception[]
Honest Trailers - The Jungle Book (2016) has a 97.6% approval rating from YouTube viewers. Many reviews commented on the incredibly positive tone of the Honest Trailer. The Hindustan Times noted that the Honest Trailer was full of praise, and wrote "the Honest Trailers are a great help in noticing details (good or bad) that you might have missed while watching the movie. For example, they tell us how the Jungle Book can also be seen as a ‘kid-friendly version of The Revenant." Movie Fone also remarked that "the Honest Trailers series" and highlighted their praise of the film, writing "they also call it groundbreaking, well-written, visually stunning, and action-packed, accepting that it's just way better than it should be."
Uproxx wrote that the Honest Trailer was "brutally candid" and observed that it "particularly mocks how absurd some of the film’s CGI scenes are, and how they went about filming them." Geek Girl Authority said the Honest Trailer was "awesome" and wrote "my favorite part is when they refer to Mowgli as a ‘parkour loving, orphan Macgyver.’"
Production credits[]
Video thumbnail for Honest Trailers - The Jungle Book (2016)
Voiceover Narration by Jon Bailey
Title design by Robert Holtby
Series Created by Andy Signore & Brett Weiner
Executive Producer - Andy Signore
Producers - Dan Murrell, Spencer Gilbert, Michael Bolton, Christina Kline
Written by Spencer Gilbert, Joe Starr, Dan Murrell & Andy Signore
Edited by Bruce Guido and Randy Whitlock
External links []
- Honest Trailer for Jungle Book is here and they aren’t mocking it for once - Hindustan Times article
- 'Revenant' for kids: Honest Trailers praises 'Jungle Book' remake - Cnet article
- Honest Trailers Presents Disney’s ‘The Jungle Book’ (2016) - Geeks of Doom article
- Pull Up Your Red Diaper for 'The Jungle Book' Honest Trailer - Movie Fone article
- Screen Junkies’ Honest Trailers Go For The Jungle Book! - Geek Girl Authority article
- HONEST TRAILERS CAN BARELY FIND FAULT WITH THE JUNGLE BOOK - Nerdist article
- Things We Saw Today: The Jungle Book Gets an “Honest Trailer” and It’s, Well, Spot On - The Mary Sue article
- The Honest Trailer For ‘The Jungle Book’ Is Brutally Candid - Uproxx article
- The Honest Trailer for “The Jungle Book” just got super real - Hello Giggles article