hyped garbage

From my favorite movies..

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Probably the most serious and realistic adaptation of Tarzan I've seen. The first act is great. The harshness and grittiness in the tone was a great way to set the mood. The second half is good and has some better moments, but it doesn't hold up as well as the first half and leaves the film a little anticlimactic.The development and exploration of John/Tarzan's character is well thought out and the performance was really believable. Ian Holm is fantastic in the film as his friend and the journey they make together should have been explored more. Going into the film i expected to see a film where Tarzan defends his animal friends from evil humans in the jungle, but I got a very grounded and simple film about a man trying to adapt into a life he naturally wasn't raised for. The duality and having to choose between the two lives is an interesting concept, but it leaves it unresolved in my opinion.There are some very dramatic and sad moments here too. The bond between the apes and the man is felt more than the bond between humans sometimes. The apes have their cheesy moments, but there's also really strong and emotional moments too. The detail in the costumes switches around a bit. The best compliment to the ape costumes I can give is that the eyes where done so well that I actually thought those were real ape ayes.There are even some scenes that deal with the human beings desire to kill and rip apart other animals, like dissecting, hunting and chaining them up. Seeing those things from Tarzan's perspective was a bit haunting and heartbreaking and you feel the conflict.Some great performances, great first half, gritty & grounded moments are all strong points, but it loses steam in the second half and drags on a bit for too long and leaves you feeling unresolved. The film also lacked more tension and intensity towards the end which would have picked the whole thing up and made up for the calmer moments. I like calmer films, but it really builds up to something exciting to happen, and it never does.Still, it's probably the best adaptation of Tarzan I've seen and the one who truly makes you feel the tragedy of this truly sad and haunting tale. It ain't as light as you might expect.

Though a movie should always be judged on its own merits, yet it is impossible to watch a Tarzan movie without comparing it to the novel or other Tarzan movies. In comparing the book with a movie version, there is the question of fidelity to the original story and fidelity to the spirit of the novel.In this movie, it appears at first that we may be watching the first Tarzan movie to follow the story of the novel. Minor changes are to be expected, of course. But a jarring major change is when Tarzan meets Jane. In the novel, she is abducted by an ape and rescued by Tarzan. Though he cannot speak a human language, they fall in love. In this movie, he does not meet Jane until after he has learned speak English and has returned to England. As for the great ending of the novel, when Tarzan renounces his claim to be Lord Greystoke for the sake of the woman he loves, who has promised to marry his cousin, forget about it.But that is not the worst of it, for the real violence is to the spirit of the novel. In the book, Tarzan is the strong, silent type, who manages to maintain his noble bearing even in the jungle. In this movie, Tarzan runs about on all fours, oo-oo-ooing like an ape. As Nietzsche once pointed out, man regards the ape as either a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment, and that is what Tarzan seems to be. This is bad enough while he is in the jungle, but long after he has returned to England, two hours into the movie, he is still running about on all fours and making silly ape noises.It might be argued that this is more realistic. It probably is, for the Tarzan of this movie reminds me of the title character in "The Wild Child" (1970), based on the true story of Victor of Aveyron, a boy who had grown up wild in the forest. But if realism is what you are after, you should watch that movie instead of a movie about Tarzan anyway.There is a character on the Greystoke estate that is mentally deficient, and he reminds us of Tarzan, emphasizing the fact that much of Tarzan's behavior strikes us as moronic. Actually, one of the unresolved questions about Victor is whether he was a boy of normal intellect, which was impaired by his growing up without human contact, or whether he had been abandoned by his parents because he was mentally retarded to begin with. This movie almost makes us ask the same question about Tarzan.In other words, despite having the best production values of any Tarzan movie ever made, it is one of the worst. For all of their shortcomings, the Johnny Weissmuller movies remain the best, especially "Tarzan the Ape Man" (1932) and "Tarzan and His Mate" (1934).

Sometimes movies don't work particularly well. They seem to have much of the needed components but the end result falls flat or is off-target. That fits as the description for "Greystoke, the Legend of Tarzan" an ambitious and large-budgeted production of the the earlier 80s. It's directed by Hugh Hudson and stars Christopher Lambert, Ian Holm, Ralph Richardson, and debuts a young 20-something Andie MacDowell. The story is long-winded and without spirit. For starters, The ape scenes are mixed. Sometimes the difficulties of make-believe with puppeteering and live-action are out on display, as well as some poorly designed sets/stages. In this case at times ape- actors/costumes/puppets are woefully unbelieable, and the main set with the black panther looked tacky and man-made. Worse though, Lambert seems miscast physically. He has no muscularity and we are supposed to believe he is king of the apes!? Then the filmmakers capitalize on animal-call parlor tricks which wears thin over the runtime. However, Richardson and Holm together help prop the movie up to keep it away from failure. They are excellent in most scenes, and I especially enjoyed the early scenes of discovery and learning with forsaken Holms and Lambert characters as well the old Richardson remarking of his land and legacy. MacDowell's voice was strangely dubbed reportedly, and confirmed although she has a lesser role than first billing - maybe 35 min of screen time and is quietly on display dollishly. There needed to be more excitement, vitality, and physicality in the movie, although the filmmakers did achieve the sensory/feeling/touching part of primates pretty well. The internal conflict doesn't really involve, and there's no real antagonist or something to be lost. To note, Photography and music are competently put together. A mixed bag - 6/10

A bit of an oddity, this: a few years ago I read through the original Burroughs novel and was eager to find out how this adaptation held up. The answer is that it follows the story in the book extremely closely – especially in the first half – depicting events with a kind of vicious believability that's miles away from the chest-beating, vine-swinging Tarzans of old.It's not entirely accurate – there's far less of that grisly business involving the hostile tribesmen – but what I saw, I liked. The apes are played by men in pretty convincing suits, and watching Tarzan growing up to become lord of the jungle is a lot of fun. In addition to that, the film plays an ace in the casting of Ian Holm as the Belgian captain who 'civilises' Tarzan. Holm gives a subtle, mannered, quite excellent performance, one that's filled with emotion and is the best in the entire movie.That's not to say that Christopher Lambert, as the title character, is bad. It's a memorable debut turn, carefully judged and entirely physical. He gets the movements and mannerisms of a jungle-born man just right, which is why it's a shame that the ridiculous decision was made to rub him over with animal noises. If he's angry, a lion's roar comes out of his mouth, etc. The filmmakers rely on such things a lot, especially in the second half, and it's a real shame.That's not the only problem with the second half. Once the action shifts to England, the pacing slows right down and the film feels devoid of incident. Andie MacDowell is fairly uninteresting in playing an insipid Jane, and even a final, unexpectedly touching turn from Ralph Richardson fails to liven things up. As I remember, this part of the film deviates quite substantially from the book, and it suffers for it. Basically we get an hour of Tarzan wandering around his mansion and it's all rather depressing. It's a shame, because earlier on a great deal of effort was made to bring those jungle scenes to life, and it all fizzles out at the end.