The latest film adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s tales of young Mowgli’s adventures in the Indian jungle is very engaging.

    Director Jon Favreau makes his new film immediately welcoming with its wonderfully detailed wilderness* environment. It also gives the background story through the voice of narrator Ben Kingsley in the guise of the black panther Bagheera, who watches over orphaned* Indian boy Mowgli (Neel Sethi). The latter has been raised by wolves but can scamper* through the trees like a monkey and is able to survive partly by a truce* that allows all animals to gather around a watering hole without fear of becoming lunch for their natural predators*.

    The jungle creatures are basically peaceable, apart from the menacing tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba) and Kaa, a huge tree-dwelling serpent* (Scarlett Johansson).

    Bagheera decides that it’s finally time for Mowgli to leave his jungle home and join his own species. Protesting that he doesn’t have a clue what humans are like, Mowgli is finally convinced* when the wise panther promises to see him to his destination, resulting in a dangerous trek that leads them across landscapes and into contact with all kinds of animals.

    The tone significantly shifts with the arrival of Baloo (Bill Murray), a friendly rascal* of a bear whose addiction to honey reminds of a grown-up Winnie the Pooh.

    But while the simple Baloo is content with the massive honeycombs Mowgli is able to get him, a more formidable* figure awaits in an abandoned ancient city. Kidnapped by no-nonsense monkeys, Mowgli is put at the mercy of the Godfather of the jungle, an orangutan* named King Louie (Christopher Walken) who insists that Mowgli “summon the red flower,” the animals’ term for the one thing humans seem to possess and control that animals can’t: fire.

    The action finale, while well staged, is pretty predictable and includes a bad-guy death that repeats the same fate of Disney villains going back decades.(SD-Agencies)