George, George, George of the Jungle… strong as he can be… watch out for that tree!
Every kid growing up had that glorious theme song stuck in their heads to the point they considered shoving a drill into their skull just to make the voices stop. Or maybe that was just me. Either way, the old 1960s cartoon still holds a special place in a lot of people’s hearts, and it’s no surprise why. There was something special about George: his ridiculous strength, the legendary name, and the fact that he had the IQ of a potato—but he was our potato, dammit. With all that natural charisma, zany antics, and complete inability to duck a 100-foot wall of lumber, you can imagine the disappointment when Warner Bros. announced they were making a live-action version of George’s far less entertaining counterpart: Tarzan.
The Legend of Tarzan opens with the tragic origin of our hero, played by Alexander Skarsgård. After Tarzan’s mother dies of natural causes and his father is brutally murdered by a pack of angry apes (someone definitely got the short end of the stick), young Tarzan is taken in and raised by the same apes who killed his parents. He grows up to become the legend and king of the jungle we all vaguely remember from childhood—assuming you remember anything about Tarzan besides the yell.
Years later, Tarzan (now going by John Clayton, Lord Greystoke) is living a civilized life in England with his wife Jane, played by Margot Robbie. An American envoy named George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson) shows up and urges him to return to his African homeland, which is being threatened by an evil, money-hungry Belgian tyrant named Captain Léon Rom, played by Christoph Waltz. Now that we’ve got the names out of the way, let’s talk about the positives of this film……Okay, now let’s talk about the negatives. Perhaps good CGI is getting more and more expensive with inflation, but considering this movie had a $180 million budget and was clearly designed to be shown in IMAX theaters, the visuals are shockingly bad.
The camera work feels like being strapped into a roller coaster that delivers all the nausea and none of the fun. One particularly awful directing choice has Tarzan and George holding entire conversations while the camera spins in a continuous 360-degree rotation around them as they stand completely still. It’s a headache both creatively and physically. On top of that, the constant shaky-cam is so aggressive you start to believe Michael J. Fox directed this thing on a GoPro during an earthquake. The CGI animals—creatures that play a major role in the story—look like they were rendered on a PlayStation 2. During one scene where Samuel L. Jackson is being stalked by an ostrich, I genuinely thought to myself, “If this looks this bad in regular 2D, God bless the poor sucker who paid $18 to watch this lack of effort in IMAX.” The apes, lions, and other wildlife frequently appear rubbery, unfinished, or strangely weightless.
For a movie that spent nearly two hundred million dollars, the digital creatures feel like leftovers from a mid-2000s video game cutscene. The more I thought about The Legend of Tarzan, the harder time I had finding anything genuinely good to say about it. The story is extremely generic—we all know exactly how it ends. Tarzan and his woodland animal friends eventually save his damsel in distress from the evil European who is busy raping and pillaging villages for blood diamonds (or in this case, the diamonds of Opar). The acting feels completely phoned in by almost everyone involved. Skarsgård’s Tarzan is apparently supposed to be stoic and deadpan, but the rest of the cast looks like they just want to collect their mortgage payment and go home. There is no heart to this film, no flair, no sense of wonder, and almost zero fun.
Even the 1997 George of the Jungle live-action movie—yes, the one with Brendan Fraser swinging into trees every five minutes—is a significantly better film. By the time this review is posted, I’m confident it still has a higher score on Rotten Tomatoes. The Legend of Tarzan is just a boring waste of time. It’s so boring that I literally lost the will to finish this review in the middle of typing it… and then forced myself to keep going purely out of spite. David Yates (coming off the Harry Potter films) directs this thing with all the energy of a man who has already checked out. The action sequences are competent but never exciting. The romance between Tarzan and Jane has all the heat of a wet sock. Christoph Waltz does his usual “charming European villain” routine, which by 2016 already felt like a greatest-hits package. Samuel L. Jackson is the only one who occasionally wakes up and delivers a line with any personality, but even he seems slightly embarrassed to be sharing the screen with that ostrich. At 110 minutes, the movie somehow feels much longer. Every jungle set piece that should feel epic instead feels weightless and digital.
Every dramatic conversation is staged with bizarre camera choices that scream “we spent the money on the wrong things.” And every attempt to give the story some modern political weight (colonialism bad, diamonds bad, white savior slightly complicated) comes across as half-hearted window dressing on an otherwise empty adventure.
The Legend of Tarzan is the cinematic equivalent of paying full price for a fancy restaurant meal and being served microwaved leftovers. It looks expensive on paper, but the second you take a bite you realize someone forgot the seasoning, the passion, and the basic competence. George of the Jungle may have been a lovable idiot who kept running into trees, but at least he was memorable. This Tarzan just stands there looking pretty while the budget quietly dies in the background.Strong as he can be? Not even close. Watch out for that tree… and that $180 million price tag.
1/5
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