The Legend of Tarzan
Flix!
The movies have goofed with this character a lot in the early days of cinema. Never very successfully. Somewhere in the early 30's, somebody hired the recent Olympics swimming star to be the new Tarzan and this led to a multi-picture franchise that wasn't horrible. But they were B pictures. And as time went on Disney did a horrible, disgraceful, dreadlocks terrible version cartoon style, and Bo Derek tried some ridiculous thing, and it all flopped. Some tell me there was a version in the 80's called Greystoke that wasn't bad, but I haven't seen it.
And now this. Director David Yates, thinks he can tackle this with success. And oh buddy, for my money, as a kid that grew up reading all the Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff, he nailed it. This hit a great note for me. A Home Run.
Going in, I thought this was going to be another schlocky attempt at this incredible story, that would be done poorly. But it starts after Tarzan, that is John, Lord of Greystoke, has been rescued and is home. I love the way it kept switching back and forth to tell us the whole story.
The writers did a great job of plugging in much of this incredible story into one movie. For example, having read all the books, there is a book called Tarzan and the Leopard People.
And the Leopard people show up in this film. And there is a lot of great, not over the top action, and the Tarzan call done twice very tastefully, and great performances. Also there is a reference to the Jewels of Opar. That was yet another Tarzan novel being referenced, so these writers did their homework.
Christoph Waltz (Leon Rom) is the bad guy, an agent of the King of Belgium, who lures Tarzan back to Africa to face the chief of the Leopard People to settle a grudge. And then the aid to Tarzan is George Washington Williams, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Seeing both Waltz and Jackson, I asked the wife, is this a Tarrentino film? She didn't know.
It's not.
I felt it early on in this film. The costumes were eye catching. The performances by Margaret Robbie as Jane and the wonderful performance of Tarzan, John, Earl of Greystoke, was amazing. Alexander Skarsgård, was the the star of this picture. And a star he was indeed. This whole film dripped with great casting.
So we came away from this really liking this movie. And we recommend it highly. This is not another fumbling attempt to cover this great material. This is a pretty great movie. See it.
Grade: A-
