Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle Review - 5 Ups & 4 Downs
3. It's Full Of Jarring Tonal Shifts
Hold onto your hats, because this film sure is a wild ride from a tonal perspective.
In the service of crafting a less family-friendly rendition of Kipling's source material, Mowgli certainly isn't afraid to get dark, but this isn't always juxtaposed particularly well with its lighter and more whimsical moments.
Serkis often changes the mood of concurrent scenes on a dime and the result proves distractingly jarring to the audience. Most frustratingly of all, it feels like a movie that can't quite decide if it wants to strictly appeal to grown-ups or go the kiddie fantasy route.
This could very well be a result of Serkis bristling with Warner Bros. on-set or in editing before the film was sold to Netflix, but whatever the reason, there's no clear tonal through-line here and it does draw far more attention to itself than it probably should.