As a masters student in animation, it pains me to watch this film. I loved the original storyline and the renditions told to me as a child but this is missing the essence of the story: the companionship between a man and animal, their adventures in the bush and how the underdog triumphs above all. The Jungle Book, done in 1967 achieves this far and beyond this movie. Story is king, the animation is bad but if the story was any good then they could have gotten away from it- an example of this being "Hoodwinkd".
The character design and models are poor and unappealing and there so many supporting, useless characters, such as the rooster. The animation is floaty and cringe-worthy, none of the 10 principles seem to be taken into account which places this movie technically behind Snow White, done in 1937. Fitzgerald is possibly the most unappealing animated character I have ever seen, worse than Gurgi in the Black Cauldron. The pitiful voice acting makes me sad, for something that is so 'proudly South African', they literally chose every other accent to be the voices of the characters (including a put-on French accent??).
The sad thing is that the emphasis of this production is completely wrong: hair, fabric and other simulations should be the last added extras, and redoing the whole film because Stereoscopic films were starting to become trendy is a terrible waste of money and time.
To say "but my kids enjoyed it" is a sad excuse for this film, they probably enjoyed the TV-watching experience more than anything else and with so many fantastic 3D animated features done before this production even began (The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille), there are far better things to take your kids to see where you don't have to suffer through in the process.
The creators say that the success of this movie depended on the distribution and marketing of the film, which was difficult coming from SA and out of their hands but the real reason why this movie failed was due to the lack of skill, reference and focus. For how could they have taken the most loved South African classic and failed so badly?
