The Disney team have done a fine job of polishing up this 40 year old classic. The picture looks great but the improvement serves to highlight that this is a long way from the highpoints of artwork that was achieved in earlier animation such as "snow white & the seven dwarfs' or 'bambi'. The backgrounds are basic & the characters drawn without much detail. So too the story is extremely basic & ends quite abruptly. So how come this is seen as such a classic? Well for one the characterization is spot on but most of all the songwriting is for my money the best Disney have ever produced & the actors turned each song into a classic. Obviously Phil Harris singing 'Bear neccessities' is memorable but so too are Sterling Holloway,(also the voice of Pooh for Disney), as Kaa the snake slithering his way through 'trust in me', far funnier than you remember & superbly timed. Best of all though are the peerless Louis Prima's impromptu scat on 'King of the swingers' as king Loius which is superb right up to the point when Phil Harris joins in the pair take it to even greater heights with their competing vocals. Quite frankly the DVD is worth the entrance price for this alone.
The sound is an even greater improvement than the picture & the 5.1 mix is vibrant with great use given to the rear surrounds.
The extras are fine, especially the unusually candid commentary & doc.
This deserved a decent release & so this DVD is a pleasure to own.

It cant get any better than this. Disney beloved animated classic "The Jungle Book" finally gets the long overdue special edition treatment. This new 40th Anniversary release will include an all-new digital restoration of the film and for the very first time ever, this release will feature the movie in 1.75:1 widescreen aspect ratio (Please be aware that "Jungle Book" was filmed in 1.37:1 aspect ratio and was cropped for its theatrical screenings. The movie loses a little from top and bottom here in this restored version so think twice before selling off your old copies which featured the movie in its original fullscreen ratio). Along with a 5.1 Disney Enhanced Home Theater Mix soundtrack, this edition includes a restored original theatrical soundtrack too. French and Spanish language tracks will also appear on the disc. According to dvdtimes, extras on this platinum edition will include:

Audio Commentary - Combines comments from current animators with audio from the original creative team who made the film

The Lost Character: Rocky The Rhino - For the first time ever, the near-sighted, short-tempered rhinoceros named Rocky is brought to the screen using original storyboards and original voice recordings by Frank Fontaine.Read more ›

The feature-length cartoons Disney continues to produce are fine films, but nowhere near as good as classics like The Jungle Book. Unburdened by the modern-day Disney habit of giving every film a heavy family-friendly moral message, the Jungle Book is just 100% pure fun, with a cool hero (Mowgli), entertaining friends (especially the bear Baloo) and some great villainous characters (most memorably Shere Khan the tiger). This movie was made years before Phil Collins or Elton John were drafted in as cartoon soundtrack composers, and the songs are just awesome - "The Bare Necessities", "I Wanna Be Like You" and Kaa the snake's hissed encouragement to "Trust in Me". Get this video before the distributors withdraw it again!

This is one of those films that you simply can't go wrong with.
My one year old son calls for "Jungle" on a daily basis and routinely announces the appearance of all the animals... "jungle" (Bagheera the panther), "bear" (Baloo the bear), "phunt" (Elephants), "tiger" (Shere Khan), "neck" (Kaa The Snake), "monkey" (King Louis the orang utan).
As for me, in my thirty-somethings... I just enjoy the story of friendship, loyalty, and down-right wackyness. And I can't help but love the music from the days when Disney films just made toe-tappingly catchy music instead of going for grand-scale Oscar nomination material.
I defy anyone not to have "Bear Necessities", "I Wanna Be Like You" or "Trust In Me" buzzing round their head 24 hours after watching this classic film.
Disney have produced some remarkable films over the years but this must surely feature in anyone's top ten.

Walt Disney has given us so much over the last hundred years (well, not quite...but getting there!), some of it wonderful and some - particularly of late - distinctly mediocre (though Ratatouille is a triumph).

Everyone has their favourite Disney film - his own was apparently Bambi - but I'm sure a great many of us would pick this one. It was the first film I was ever taken to see at a cinema, so for me there's no contest.

Its influence extends to this day - just the other month I bought a Louis Prima CD set, memories of his towering performance as the voice of Orang-Utang King Louie burned forever into my memory. And as for The Bear Necessities, they play it in clubs nowadays...and it fills the dancefloor!

Indeed, despite Disney often being accused of cheapening or Americanising children's classics (and none of us who live in London will ever quite forgive Dick Van Dyke's accent in Mary Poppins), this film stands up a whole lot better than the book which inspired it, Kipling having been neither even a tad politically correct nor an instinctive children's writer. In some ways, however, the film echoes the sixties in which it was made: the vultures are clearly based on The Beatles and a couple have reasonable Scouse accents. One sounds like Stanley Holloway in My Fair Lady, but there you go - at least it's not Dick Van Dyke!

And now those Vultures will be joined by a new character - a rhino Uncle Walt didn't like at the audition. It may be a gimmick but I'm a little bit intrigued. Aren't you?

A marvellous film for kids and adults alike - and what a Christmas present!