The Jungle Book

Jon Favreau’s 2016 film was shot entirely on sound stages in Los Angeles and every animal character was created wholly in computer animation, so the only performer actually photographed is the boy. That makes eyeline the central problem: every scene is a child reacting to something placed there later. What is striking is that it attacks the problem instead of dodging it. The boy is constantly touching the animals, riding them, being carried, and contact is the hardest thing to fake, exactly where the illusion holds. Puppet figures were built for him to play against on set, though none appear in the finished film. Thousands auditioned for Mowgli, and the film won the Academy Award for visual effects. The songs are deliberately demoted. Favreau decided against a musical, so the number Bill Murray sings drifts through a scene rather than becoming a set piece, and Christopher Walken’s lyrics were rewritten so his reads as a threat. The ending inverts the 1967 cartoon: Mowgli does not leave for the village but stays in the jungle, and the snake Kaa was changed from male to female. A good fit if you want to watch how contact is faked with one live performer. Not for you as family viewing with small children: the tiger scenes are staged as a predator hunting a boy.