Golden Films: The Jungle King
Recently, my wife and I have been watching Phelous make fun of low-budget (and occasionally weirdly high-budget) animated movies. Eventually, this turned into "Hey, let's track down movies he hasn't done, and get our kicks that way". So, on Amazon, we watched (a VHS rip of) The Jungle King, from Golden Films.
After seeing so many of these movies made fun of, it's kind of hard for me to get a handle on this. There are some of the usual suspects for a movie like this:
- The animation is incredibly choppy
- The soundtrack just blasts public domain music
With a few special confusing bits:
- According to the Chancellor's map, the whole movie is taking place on an island. So why is the Raj so insistent about trying to get ocean-front property? Seriously, he's so insistent.
- Why are the peasant lions Jewish?
- Why is the gorilla Jamaican-or-thereabouts when he sings, and seesawing wildly between Irish and Indian otherwise?
- The animals have constructed a well-developed, if corrupt, civilization, with extensive architecture, agriculture, clothing, trade, and time-keeping. Why, then, are humans hunting them to put in zoos, and why do they let them keep jewellery and bathtowels when they do catch them?
- Why was he wearing a bathtowel? It's not like he wears pants normally.
- Why does he have a throne out in the middle of nowhere?
Even with all of these questions, I have to say, this wasn't, like, transcendantly bad. I'd say it's half-baked, on the mediocre side of things. It's very Golden Films, is what it is.
I'm like, on the one hand, people should be reviewing this, because it's right there, but on the other hand, what is there to say? It's not an adaptation of any existing story or event, so there's no question of fidelity to address. It is what it is, and what it is, is... hard-to-follow story-telling, distracting animation, and jokes that they didn't trust the audience to get.