LITHUANIA — 94%. Rottentomatoes.com’s “Tomatometer” gives The Jungle Book (2016) a rating of 94%.

Why did anyone like this movie? How could anyone enjoy the blasphemy spewing out from the gigantic theater screen?

Let’s start with the child actor. He played the character… mooglet? I don’t remember. Anyway, this kid’s acting was reminiscent of my second grade play. We did A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was Puck. I danced in circles with sparkly pink fairy wings on my back. Then I got to play Oberon in eighth grade, so I moved up the ranks. That was nice.

Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew’d thee once.

The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid

Will make or man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees.

The sleeping eye-lids of America must have been under a magical purple flower spell when they saw The Jungle Book (2016) because they madly doted on this utterly abysmal creature. Speaking of creatures, the CGI animals. They were pretty slick, I gotta say. These were some of the best CGI animals I’ve ever seen; the animation of the big cats and wolves was fantastic, and the textures on them were crazy realistic. But let’s put that aside for a moment, because the characters embodying those animations were GROSS! All of the characters reacted to surprising moments with a GASP!, to happy moments with an AWW!, and to troubling moments with a HEY, MOOGLET, BE CAREFUL! I could have written this movie upside down in my sleep. Abysmal! Oh, and don’t even get me started on the bear. Beloogi or whatever. Bill Murray sounded half asleep throughout most of his monologue, although that may have been what he was going for. Doesn’t matter. I wasn’t impressed. 

Also the ending is like okay, really? You diverted a river to put out a forest fire? Let’s talk about that for a second. A couple of elephants can’t just gather a bunch of sticks and leaves and divert an entire river to the left a little bit. The river would just keep flowing, push the sticks out of the way or something. Rivers are fierce. You ever seen a river? Once I was upstate and there was this dog on a rock in the middle of a babbling brook and it was very scared. Honestly I thought it was a statue at first. But we rescued it and brought it to a shelter after feeding it leftover turkey meatballs. Funny dog. Speaking of funny, you know what wasn’t? This movie. Well, I mean, it was funny occasionally but for the most part the laugh lines were weak. Oh, and you know what else? The tiger man person man tiger what is it? No not the tiger. The… uh… starts with a ‘p’. The PANTHER! That’s it. He had a bit of a British accent the whole time which was alright, I guess, although animals all living in the same place with different accents doesn’t really make sense. But that’s beside the point. The panther calls Beleegio “Ole’ champ” at one point. And I’m like HMM? OLE’ CHAP? IS THAT WHAT THEY SAY IN THE RAIN FOREST? Yeah see I’m not a fan of that kind of thing.

OH AND I HAVEN’T EVEN TOUCHED ON CHRISTOPHER WALKEN YET. OOOOOH NELLY. Christopher Walken singing a modified and weirdly forced version “I Wanna Be Like You” made me really uncomfortable. Why, Would you. Cast. A man, who. Talks like… this. To sing a song? And what on God’s green earth is a gigantakipatuhs? Gigrantichipokis? Hold on a second. … Okay, I looked it up. Christopher Walken played a gigantopithecus, a long extinct giant monkey. Why incorporate that into the song? WAY too many syllables! Ridiculous! And who cares? You coulda’ said he was an orangy-tang I woulda’ been like okay Disney you got it. But no, the screenwriters had to do their research and really delve deep into the exotic world of extinct species with unnecessarily long names. STYUPID! I’m not for it! I don’t understand why anyone was for it!

OFFICIAL RATING: 1/6 mooglets. Would not recommend.