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Tarzan

Film review

Tarzan
Walt Disney
Cert U. 78 minutes

It was a drizzly half-term afternoon. The cinema was full of excited children foaming at the mouth with popcorn and Coke, accompanied by parents in various stages of nervous dementia, hoping their charges might at least be distracted for an hour, and the words 'Give me a break!' seemingly written on their furrowed brows.

This was not the ideal setting in which to assess the merits of Disney's new Tarzan cartoon. However, it worked. The kids loved it and a contented hush descended on the cinema.

Visually it is quite breathtaking. The opening seascape and some of the jungle panoramas are almost works of art. Not only does Tarzan swing through the trees, meet up with the professor's daughter, Jane, and get involved in ferocious fights, but he also skids along twisty jungle branches like a skate-boarder on top form. The soundtrack by Phil Collins is less memorable.

Though the plot is somewhat changed, the vital dynamics of Edgar Rice Burroughs' original tale remain. What is a man and what is a beast? Does civilisation corrupt, and is the primitive life the life we were meant for? These themes are explored in a simple way with the final message leaning towards 'primitive is best'. If by primitive we mean getting back to Eden, perhaps the Christian can agree, but if we mean the damning of progress, and the coalescing of the human and the animal, we are in trouble.

The Tarzan tale was particularly interesting to me in that I had recently seen the Sally Magnusson TV documentary about a boy from East Africa who had apparently been looked after by a group of monkeys for a while. That boy had been found and loved back into humanity (by a group of Christians?). In a secular world, any moves back towards primitivism will only dehumanise us. But I don't think the kids or their parents in the cinema were thinking about such matters.

JEB
Dr John Benton