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Disney remounts 'Jungle Book' with magical mix of CGI, live-action

Jon Favreau's wowie-pazzowie, eye-popping “Jungle Book” is an exhilarating motion picture experience that kerplops us into a Campbellian adventure in the middle of an authentic Indian jungle right out of a Rudyard Kipling storybook.

It looks real. But it's computer-generated imagery.

All of it.

“Jungle Book” merges these astonishing visuals with classic Disney story conventions to create a movie that stands on its own achievements, while paying musical homage to Disney's 1967 original “Jungle Book.”

Favreau's funny and scary remake opens with wiry young Mowgli (an energetic and limber Neel Sethi) frantically sprinting, scampering through the trees to avoid being caught by a growling beastie.

It turns out to be a survival exercise taught by the grand panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), who rescued Mowgli after the villainous tiger Shere Khan (a chilling Idris Elba) dispatched his daddy.

Mowgli now runs with a family of wolves in a peaceful place where animals live together just as in “Zootopia,” only with photo-realistic looking creatures.

Shere Khan (Idris Elba) hunts the man-cub Mowgli in "The Jungle Book."

The menacing Shere Khan, looking worn and war-torn with scars and a dead eye, shows up to remind the animals, especially wolves, that Mowgli is a man-cub and must be rejected by the group, or even better, killed. The tiger will be happy to do the job.

Bagheera suggests his protégé go back to where he belongs, the human world. Mowgli agrees to go only after he realizes Shere Khan might kill his wolf family if he stays.

“The Jungle Book” has cute, cuddly critters and beautifully rendered jungle scapes to captivate us during the early scenes.

Then the movie fires up the entertainment booster rockets when Baloo the bear arrives.

Mowgli (Neel Sethi) breaks into a wet duet with Baloo (Bill Murray) in Jon Favreau's remake of "The Jungle Book."

He's played by a full-throttle Bill Murray, whose facial features and frumpy body have been ever so subtlety integrated into the character.

Baloo, taking a lead from Winnie the Pooh, persuades the man-cub to obtain honey for him by using clever tools, disparagingly called human “tricks” by the animals. The relationship between Baloo and Mowgli becomes the heart of this story, as it did in 1967. (Murray had practice in the curmudgeon-and-kid comedy “St. Vincent.”)

Baloo and Bagheera try to protect Mowgli, threatened by the tiger, then by Scarlett Johansson's hypnotically seductive snake, and later by Christopher Walken's Kong-sized orangutan, King Louie, who demands Mowgli obtain for him the powerful “red flower” (aka fire) used by humans.

Walken warbles the old song “I Wan'na Be Like You” with his eccentric vocal pattern, the second of two songs in the movie. (You knew that Baloo and Mowgli would break into “Bare Necessities” at some point, right?)

Young actor Neel Sethi beat out 2,000 competitors to win the role of Mowgli in Jon Favreau's remake of "The Jungle Book."

Beating out more than 2,000 boys to play Mowgli, Sethi was clearly the perfect choice, transparently boyish with a gangly pre-adolescent physicality that would give the Energizer Bunny a run for his batteries.

Mowgli eventually winds up with his own kind, but in the story's mixed family theme, they aren't the ones who look like him or dress like him. They're just characters who accept him for who he is, an exceptional boy whose “tricks” can be used for something good.

<b>Note:</b> A live-action “Jungle Book: Origins” is coming in 2017. It's directed by “Lord of the Rings” actor Andy Serkis who also plays Baloo. After Murray's killer performance? Good luck, Andy.

“The Jungle Book”

★ ★ ★ ★

Starring: Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong'o, Scarlett Johansson, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Walken, Garry Shandling

Directed by: Jon Favreau

Other: A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated PG. 107 minutes

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