Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle Review - 5 Ups & 4 Downs
Ups...
5. The Stunning (But Weird) Visual Effects
Given the incredible visual majesty of the 2016 movie, Mowgli sure had a lot to live up to, and for the most part it surprisingly succeeds.
Given Serkis' experience working with performance capture tech, he's able to combine physical performance with digital animal trickery in a way that's a little offputting at first, but ultimately quite effective.
You can pretty much see the actors within the animals, which won't be for everyone, but thanks to the (mostly) high visual fidelity of the animal fur, it's a risky effort that pays off.
It also helps that, in its quest to be a darker telling of this story, the CGI animals look far rougher and more mangy than their fluffier counterparts in the Favreau movie.
There are some VFX elements that occasionally falter - some composited backgrounds and some CGI fire late in the movie in particular - but for the most part it feels like every penny of the production ended up on screen in the final film.