Never mind Mowgli brave and spunky as he is. But even with Shere Khan tracking him, poor Mowgli isn't convinced he should live with his own kind, or that he belongs anywhere but the jungle. Pat O'Malley) and his elephant patrol, the colonel's wife (Verna Felton) and son (Clint Howard), mad King Louie (Louis Prima) and his army of monkeys, and a quartet of kindly vultures: Dizzie (Lord Tim Hudson), Flaps (Chad Stuart), Ziggy (Digby Wolfe) and Buzzie (O'Malley). Bagheera volunteers to escort Mowgli to the closest village a long walk home that brings the boy across the paths of Baloo the care-free bear (Phil Harris), Kaa the hypnotic python (Sterling Holloway), proud Colonel Hathi (J. But when a bloodthirsty Bengal tiger named Shere Khan (George Sanders) returns with a taste for man, the wolf pack decides the safest course of action is to send Mowgli back to his people. When black panther Bagheera (Sebastian Cabot) finds a baby boy in a basket in the middle of the jungle, he takes the orphan - Mowgli (Bruce Reitherman) - to a mother wolf, who raise the child as one of her own for the next ten years. It isn't the greatest of Disney's classics, but it's no less accessible or enjoyable today to those who will no doubt cherish it the most: children of all ages. And yet it's fond memories of the film - those lingering joys and delights of childhood - that make it so easy to switch off the critical cortex and reconnect with a love of animated cinema so wonderfully, so intrinsically 'Disney.' From instantly memorable songs to the colorful wildlife, the adventures of Mowgli the man-cub are brimming with heart, rhythm and soul. Viewed with a fresh pair of eyes, the film's seams and shortcomings are long past showing, and its storytelling and narrative elasticity prove a bit problematic. And that was before the death of producer Walt Disney, which came just ten months before its theatrical release. Disney's 19th animated feature had a troubled production, with firings, rewrites and changes in direction par for the course.

Stripped of nostalgia, The Jungle Book isn't quite the shining star of the '60s and '70s Mouse House canon it once was. Reviewed by Kenneth Brown, February 11, 2014 'Ol' Baloo's gonna learn ya to fight like a bear!'

Instaling The Jungle Book