A tame jungle

Disney's sequel to the story of Mowgli and his jungle companions leaves out the name of Rudyard Kipling on the credits. No loss. It could well have left out the name of Disney.

The whole threadbare production looks and sounds like one of those cheapo, functionally drawn "sequels" to its famous cartoons which the studio has begun issuing for the video market on the strength of a title, but without anything like the inventiveness or tunefulness of the original.

It may please children who aren't too mature, but even they may sense that any film which has to repeat the once catchy Bare Necessities number four times is padding its story. What story? It barely amounts to one.

Mowgli (voiced by Haley Joel Osment) is finding village life irksome with his new Indian "pop" and "mom" continually telling him to go to bed, as well as a pubescent cutie who keeps fluttering her eyes at him.

The lad pines for jungle life with Baloo (John Goodman), the big blue bear. The pull of the wild proves too strong, and soon the kid is back with the beasts. But except for a blimpish elephant and a well-drawn snake who is all hiss and frustrated bite, they simply go through the paces they performed with far more colour and character the first time round.

Even Shere-Khan the tiger (Tony Jay) suggests that he is only doing his stalking because it's stock company policy. Tame.

The Jungle Book 2
Cert: U