Franchises: Jaws. Jaws (1975)

You know how I first became aware of Jaws? When I was a very little kid, I saw an ad for Universal Studios in Orlando. It was a painted ad in some magazine and it had a picture of King Kong and the shark on it. Obviously, I knew King Kong but I asked my Mom, "What's that shark?" She said, "That's Jaws." She then proceeded to tell me a little bit about the film and the infamous, "Da-dum, da-dum" that accompanies the shark whenever he's stalking his prey. From that point on, I went through life knowing the basic story of the film and seeing bits of it on TV every now and then, even seeing a Dateline show about the real USS Indianapolis but I never actually saw Jaws until my sister got me the two-tape special edition of the movie as a Christmas present in 2000. The first tape had the movie whereas the second one had a 75-minute documentary along with deleted scenes and outtakes (not having a DVD player at that time, I didn't know what this was) as well as some trailers.

That set also made me aware of something that I didn't comprehend beforehand: how beloved and influential a film Jaws is. I knew that it was well known, obviously, but I had no idea that it was the highest grossing movie ever at the time of its release and is regarded as a classic not just in its genre but among movies period. I soon found out, however. Everyone knows this film and many also know of its influence. It created the summer movie season and gave Steven Spielberg his career. It also ruined beach-owners' business for years, as well as cemented sharks' reputation as terrifying animals. You ask anybody who's afraid of the ocean and sharks in particular why that's so and they'll usually blame Jaws. Also, anybody who's read about the making of the film knows that it almost never came to be because of the ridiculous amounts of production problems, particularly how the large mechanical shark they built was a major pain and almost never worked (so much so that Spielberg says that he often called it "the Great White Turd"). But that's neither here nor there. I'm here to give you my impressions of the film. The question is: do I think the movie is good and does it deserve its reputation. Well, I can't really answer the second part of the question because I wasn't around to personally experience the phenomenon the film was when it was released but as for the first part, yes, I do think this is a good movie. Damn good, in fact.

Everyone knows the story: after a young woman is found mutilated after she disappeared while swimming, the small island community of Amity discovers that there's an enormous great white shark prowling the nearby ocean. Police Chief Martin Brody is determined to keep the townspeople and the beaches safe but is undermined by the greedy mayor, who wants to keep the beaches open for the profitable Fourth of July weekend. After more people are killed, Brody joins up with shark expert Matt Hooper and eccentric captain Quint to hunt down the shark. But what starts out as a simple hunt turns into a fight for survival as the enormous shark proves to be a formidable enemy and puts the team's lives in danger.

Jaws is actually kind of like two movies in one. The first hour is a slow-paced thriller involving Brody having to deal with the mayor and his attempts to keep the public safe, which end up failing. It's here that we're introduced to Matt Hooper and he and Brody quickly become friends. Quint is also introduced here but he remains mainly in the background for most of this half. It's also here that Brody and Hooper learn just what they're up against when the body of the first victim is examined and they find the remains of a boat that the shark attacked. After a devastating attack on the beach on the Fourth of July, the mayor agrees to hire Quint to kill the shark. Brody and Hooper join Quint on his small boat the Orca in their hunt for the shark, beginning the second hour and where things really get good. From there on, the movie is a rousing action-adventure film, with a lot of great character moments and skillful suspense thrown in. To sum it up: the first half is a movie that I like and the second half is a movie that I love.

Chief Martin Brody, played by Roy Scheider, has to be one of my favorite heroic characters in horror and suspense films. From the moment you first see him, he's a likable, funny character who's devoted to his duty of keeping the townspeople safe but is forced not to say anything or he could possibly lose his job. When Mrs. Kitner, the mother of a kid who's killed by the shark, slaps Brody and then blames him for her son's death, it cuts to a scene of Brody sitting at his dinner table and you can tell he's really hurt by what happened, perhaps feeling guilty that he didn't stand up to the mayor and therefore, could have kept the little boy from being killed. He's also afraid of the water, which makes both for a sense of him having to overcome his fears when he goes out to kill the shark and for some comedy. I like the scene where he, his wife Ellen, and Hooper are talking and Ellen talks about his fear of water. When she asks if there's a scientific term for his condition, he simply says, "Drowning." The way he says that is so deadpan that, even to this day, it makes me smirk. He also, of course, has the famous line, "You're going to need a bigger boat" when he gets a good look at how big the shark is, a line that I think was a brilliant improv! Another thing about Brody is, despite his good intentions, he's kind of out of his depth, both being police chief in Amity as well as aboard the Orca. As police chief, when he's preoccupied with the idea that there's a shark in the nearby ocean, he's ignoring the trivial problems that the townspeople and has to be sort of wishy-washy with them. And when he's helping hunt the shark aboard the Orca, he's tying ropes the wrong way, pulling the wrong knot and causing compressed air bottles to spill all over the deck, and is clearly getting seasick when he has to throw chum out in the water. But what I like most about him is when he's come through as a real hero at the end of the film, putting himself right in the path of the shark as he tries to shoot the compressed air tank in its mouth. His line, "Smile, you son of a bitch!" and the way he says it is the epitome of badass in my opinion.

Matt Hooper, played by Richard Dreyfuss, is another instantly likable character. Dreyfuss plays him with a very gee-whiz quality, giving the impression of a young and dedicated shark expert who gets in over his head when it comes to the politics of the town and when he realizes the size of the animal he's trying to kill. If you've read the original Peter Benchley novel, as I have, you'd know that he's much more likable here than he was there, coming off as a slimy, unlikable character in the book. I really enjoy the relationship between him and Brody. The chemistry between Scheider and Dreyfuss is great. It's obvious that while both men have respect for each other, they're not above some good-natured ribbing, even though they've only known each other for a couple of days or so. One exchange between them that I like is, while searching for the shark one night, Brody finds out that Hooper is quite wealthy and he says, "It doesn't make any sense that they'd pay someone like you to watch sharks." Hooper says, "Well, it's also odd for someone who hates water to live on an island." Brody: "It's only an island if you look at from the water." Hooper looks at him and sarcastically says, "That make a lot of sense." Hooper, despite being likable, does have his limits and he becomes very irritated with the mayor when he's refusing to accept the fact that he has a major shark problem. When Brody almost blows the Orca up by untying a bunch of compressed air tanks, Hooper angrily yells, "Damn it, Martin!" By the end of the film, when their situation is becoming more and more dire, Hooper becomes very serious and high strung, snapping at Brody when he was just going to ask him a simple question. Hooper's terrifying battle with the shark in the underwater cage is another iconic moment and you can see the terror in his eyes. Finally, when he and Brody swim to shore together at the end of the film, it's made everything the two have gone through together worthwhile.

Rounding out the three main cast members is Robert Shaw as Quint, the grizzled shark hunter. His motivation is clear: he doesn't care anything about the town or the people but will kill the shark for them... for a price. He doesn't think much of the other fishermen on the island, scoffing when a bunch of them catch and kill a shark that couldn't possibly be the one they're after, and when Brody and Hooper offer to join him in the hunt, he makes it obvious that he doesn't respect Hooper, accusing him of being a pampered city boy who hasn't worked a day in his life. He also tells them that he's captain on his boat and they'll do whatever he says. He continues to refuse to listen to Hooper while pursuing the shark. And yet, there's a great scene between all three men when they're more than a little drunk after a hard day of hunting. I like how it starts off really funny and casual, with Hooper and Quint comparing injuries, Quint telling a funny anecdote about how a big Chinese arm-wrestler about broke his arm, but when Brody notices the scar of a removed tattoo on Quint's arm, that's when he tells them about the USS Indianapolis. This is when we find out about the source of Quint's eccentricities and his hatred of sharks, as he tells of the ordeal he and the other survivors went through stuck in the middle of the ocean with sharks threatening to kill them at every turn. He says that when a rescue helicopter eventually showed up to pick them up, that was when he was the most scared because he was sure a shark was going to kill him right before he could be rescued. This is hinted at later when the Orca is so badly damaged that it begins to sink and Quint glances at the life-jackets, calling back to when he said he'd never put one on again. He gives them both to Brody and Hooper, not putting one on himself. Quint's obsession to kill the shark apparently drives him temporarily mad (although some could argue that he wasn't quite right to begin with, judging from his peculiar actions and from what happened to him), as he pushes the engine of the Orca too far, causing it to blow out and making them sitting ducks for the shark. Ironically, his obsession is what ultimately leads to him experiencing exactly what he was afraid of: being eaten alive by the shark. I'm glad they changed his death from the novel (where he's simply pulled overboard by a harpoon rope) because this is much dramatic and ironic. It's also the goriest scene in the film and it's amazing this movie didn't get an R-rating for it.

The movie also benefits from a very good supporting cast. Lorraine Gary plays Brody's wife, Ellen. While she's not in the film that much, she comes across as a loving wife who supports her husband every step of the way and even becomes concerned when he starts to become obsessed with finding out everything he can about sharks. My favorite moment with her is when Brody is telling their kids to get out of the small sailboat they're sitting in on the water. Ellen at first tries to assure her husband that nothing is going to happen to them when they're sitting in shallow water... and then she sees a drawing in a book showing a shark biting through the bottom of a boat. She immediately pulls a 180 and yells at her kids to get out of the water, just as her husband was doing a few minutes ago. The look Brody gives her is priceless. Also on hand is Jeffrey Kramer as Brody's deputy, Leonard Hendricks. Again, this character doesn't have much screentime but he seems like a nice enough guy who dutifully follows Brody's directions (he would get much more to do in Jaws 2).

The most despicable character in the film is Mayor Vaughn, played by Murray Hamilton. This guy is an absolutely greedy asshole who's willing to risk the lives of the townspeople just so he can make a lot of money. He tells Brody after the major attack on the beach that he was acting in the town's best interest but I honestly believe he was just thinking about filling his own pockets. I just hate how smarmy he is towards Brody when he's telling him to keep quiet about the possibility that there's a dangerous shark roaming the waters off the island. You get the impression that he influenced a coroner to say that the first victim was possibly killed by a boat propeller, even though Brody says that's not what he first told him. He's the one responsible for young Alex Kintner getting killed and when his mother takes it out on Brody, that selfish jerk just stands by and doesn't say anything. Before that, even after the first beach attack, when Brody says that the beaches are going to be closed, Vaughn overrules him again and says they'll only be closed for twenty-four hours. It's also disgusting how he acts toward Hooper when he's trying to warn him about how enormous and dangerous the shark is, ending it by saying, "Love to prove that, wouldn't you? Get your name in the National Geographic?" Vaughn's the real villain of the movie, not the shark.

Steven Spielberg has said that his intention was for the shark to be the real star of the film. He intended to have the shark appear fully on camera for most of the movie, chomping on people left and right. However, when it became clear that the mechanical shark that they built wasn't going to work hardly at all, Spielberg had to severely overhaul his vision of the film, keeping the shark off-camera until the last third of the movie. Ironically, many people, like me, feel that this made the movie even better than it would have been had the shark worked well enough to show on-camera as much as he originally intended. Granted, there would have been nothing wrong with the shark appearing in every scene and, for someone like me who loves monster flicks, it would have been exciting and awesome but not showing the shark gave the film a Hitchcock-like class that it wouldn't have had otherwise. Because of that, Jaws became a great example of the less is more approach to horror films. For instance, the opening scene with Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) was supposed to show the shark actually come out of the water and swallow her whole. While that would have been undoubtedly cool, it's unlikely that the scene would have been as iconic as it is if it weren't for the fact that you don't see the shark but with her being dragged around and screaming, you get an idea of the shark's strength and can imagine him ripping her apart below the water. Scenes like the death of the Kintner boy or the two men who almost become food for the shark when they try to catch him may not have been as suspenseful had the shark just come out of the water and bitten them in half and the movie itself might not have been as well remembered.

In these types of horror flicks, not showing the monster for a good portion of the movie is a great build-up to when you finally do see it in all its glory. However, I feel that this is one instance where Jaws drops the ball a little bit. Everyone comments that the first time you see the shark is during that classic scene where Brody is chumming, makes a joke, and then the shark suddenly sticks his head out of the water. That's a great, classic moment no doubt but it's not the first time you get a good look at the shark. You actually see the shark for the first time when he attacks Brody's son Michael in an estuary and kills a man in a rowboat. Because it's not as classic as the chumming scene may be why many don't remember it but you very clearly see the shark chomping on the man and it's on the surface of the water no less. Now, the chumming scene is still classic, no doubt, but it just kind of puzzles me when everyone says that's the first time you really see the shark when it's not. As a result, I feel the power of the chumming scene is sort of diminished when you put it into that context, but it's still a great shock moment and classic nonetheless.

As for the shark himself, does the look still hold up nowadays? For the most part, when you see the shark, the effects do still hold up. The main reason for that is because Spielberg doesn't let the camera linger too long on the shark and you see just enough of him to convince you that he's real (something that the sequels did not do, as we'll see later). For me, the only parts where the shark looks fake is near the end of the film after Quint has been killed and Brody is left to fend for himself. When the shark smashes through the sunken inside of the boat to attack Brody, I feel that the shark does look a little hokey right there and also when Brody climbs up into the crow's nest and stabs the shark repeatedly in the head with a spear, you can see little patches where the paint has fallen off the mechanical shark's head. Still, these are just instances of nitpicking and they don't ruin the movie at all. The believability of the shark is also helped by the real shark footage shot by Ron and Valerie Taylor that appears during the attack on Hooper in the underwater cage. The best part of the real footage is an instance where a shark got its nose caught in the cage and went crazy, thrashing around in an attempt to get loose. Because the cage they used was small, it's totally believable that this real shark is the enormous one we've been seeing throughout and scenes like this just make the illusion all the more believable.

One skill that I think Spielberg is underrated for is his ability to create suspense. If you've seen his made for TV thriller Duel, you'd know that when he wants to, Spielberg has a Hitchock-like ability to make you tense and he would use that in later films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jurassic Park. Jaws in particular is a great showcase of his skill. As I said, the mechanical shark's refusal to work when needed forced Spielberg to resort to the "less is more" style and he makes great use of it. The underwater POV shots of the shark watching his victims are very well done, as well as when he closes in for the kill, like when he rushes toward the Kintner boy. Or take the scene before that when Brody is sitting on the beach, watching the water and sees a dark shape that he thinks may be a shark but turns out to be a dark diving cap on a man's head or when a swimming girl suddenly screams but it turns out that her boyfriend (at least I'm assuming it's her boyfriend) came up between her legs and picked her up on his shoulders. That's great use of suspense. But the scene that really nails it for me is the first scene where the men are on the Orca, hunting the shark. There's a closeup of Quint with his big fishing rod in the foreground that's completely casual with him taking a bite of a cracker and Brody is off-camera, trying to figure out how to tie a good knot... and suddenly, the rod moves with a soft clicking. Quint calmly glances down at it as it moves and clicks again. The music, as well, is menacing but is very soft and calm as Quint prepares to try to reel in whatever has grabbed the line. Brody and Hooper, all this time, are completely unaware until the reel starts going out like crazy with a loud screech and the scene is on. Great suspense.

One scene that never fails to scare my mom is the scene where Brody and Hooper discover Ben Gardner's wrecked boat in the middle of the ocean and Hooper investigates the hull in his scuba gear. While he's investigating a large hole in the hull, the head of Gardner suddenly floats down into view and the music does a long sting that is effectively startling. Mom always jumps at that, even when she knows it's coming. I also must admit that that scared me to death when I first saw it. It has to be the best shock moment in Spielberg's filmography. I think Spielberg kind of regrets putting that in to this day because he felt it diminished the scare of the chumming scene but I personally think both scenes still work very well.

You can't talk about Jaws without even mentioning John Williams' iconic score. That "da-dum, da-dum" has become forever tied to when you're swimming out in the middle of the ocean (or any body of water for that matter) and you wonder what might be lurking below you out of sight. Also, you can't swim with anyone else without that inevitable person acting like he or she is stalking you and humming that music. It's part of our culture and how could it not? It's the first thing you hear at the beginning of the film. You hear some odd sounds when the Universal logo comes up and after a few seconds, you hear that theme start slowly and build up. It's even ironic that it's the first thing you hear in the movie because when you bring up Jaws to anyone, the first thing they'll do more than likely is imitate the theme. It has a lot of variations to it in the ways it's used throughout the film. When the shark is swimming amongst the swimmers in the first beach scene, it starts off kind of serene but becomes tense and ever faster as he closes in on the Kintner boy. Or there are times where you don't hear the music at all and it suddenly comes out of nowhere, like when Hooper and Quint are trying to tie the rope attached to the shark to a cleat and the shark suddenly comes out of the water. Also, the theme is never used for a false alarm. During the scene where two boys cause a panic by swimming amongst some swimmers with a fake fin, you may notice that the theme doesn't play, which should be a hint that it's not the shark.

The shark theme is so famous that I feel that other parts of the score get overlooked as a result. My favorite part of the score is actually not even the theme but the music that plays when Quint tells the USS Indianapolis story. That is a very eerie piece of music and accentuates this man's fear and hatred of sharks. It's made all the more eerie because you hear a whale singing off in the distance afterward but at first, like Brody, you wonder, "What was that?" I also really like the soft parts of the score, like the slightly sad melody that plays during the scene where Brody is sitting at the dinner table, thinking about what Mrs. Kintner said to him, and notices that his young son Sean is imitating him. It's a nice piece of music. Also notable is the exciting crescendo in the finale as the shark races toward Brody as he tries to shoot the compressed air tank in its mouth, as well as the serene ending music as Brody and Hooper swim to shore together. It's a great closure to the film: the nightmare is over, the monster that terrorized Amity Island and killed many people has been destroyed, and the two heroes standing are going home for a much needed rest. You can't ask for a better closure to such an awesome flick.

I know it's typical for someone to say this but honestly, Jaws really is one of these rare movies where, despite some minor flaws here and there, everything comes together perfectly for me. The acting and characters are spot on all around, the suspense and real terror is palpable, the music is iconic and goes perfectly with the visuals, the special effects for the shark still hold up today for the most part, and the film, all told, is a fun and exciting two hours. My dad likes to tell the story of how he and his brothers saw the film when they were on vacation in Florida back in 1975 and afterward, his brothers constantly came up behind him and grabbed him in their attempts to scare him. The fact that this film had an effect on a member of my family who's not too keen on those types of movies for the most part should tell you how iconic it is. So, to answer the question I posed at the beginning of this review, to me Jaws deserves every pit of its enduring popularity and is in my top fifty (at least) favorite movies of all time.

Disney/Stuff I Grew Up With: The Three Caballeros (1944)

Unlike Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros was a film that I saw many times as a kid. I rented it a lot from my local video store and enjoyed it thoroughly. Looking at it now, it's odd that a young kid would have liked it because it's quite surreal in moments but for some reason, it just never bugged me. I guess it was because I had a character I liked, Donald Duck, as my anchor throughout all the craziness. It also may have been because it's mainly animation with live action thrown in at key points. If had been a nutty surreal live action flick like a David Lynch movie, I may not have liked it as a kid. Either way, I really loved this film as a kid and still do to this day. While it's a follow up to Saludos Amigos, I feel it's far superior to that film. Thinking about it, the main reason for that is that it's not as upfront a propaganda piece as its predecessor. Its connection to a political situation of the time isn't as strong and therefore, it doesn't feel as dated.

Like Saludos Amigos, the film has no real plot and is mainly a tour of South America, broken up into different segments. The story device that strings it all together is Donald Duck receiving a bunch of presents from his friends in Latin America. At 71 minutes, it's much longer than its predecessor, has more segments, and even though it does kind of lose its focus near the end, it never ceases being enjoyable. Once again, Donald is joined by his friend Jose Carioca, who has a much bigger role here than in Saludos Amigos, and the film also introduces a new character: a wild, pistol-toting rooster from Mexico named Panchito Pistoles.

The first segment consists of Donald opening the first present, which turns out to be a film projector, and watching a documentary about South American birds. The main focus is a cartoon about a penguin named Pablo who tires of the cold of the South Pole and journeys to warmer climates. Narrated by Sterling Holloway, this is a pretty well done little short. Pablo's half-hazard journey is amusing and a like how Holloway's narration starts off impartial but he gets involved in the story. (I know in my Saludos Amigos review, I criticized the narrator of that film for getting emotionally attached to the story of one segment but honestly, Holloway does it so much better that I actually like it.) We're then introduced to a few more birds, including the bizarre Aracuan, who sings a weird song to himself. While I do like the Aracuan, he only appears twice after this segment and then is forgotten altogether. You're led at first to believe you'll see him in the film a lot more but no, which makes me wonder why they bothered introducing him to begin with. This wouldn't be the only film he'd appear in either. Another cartoon is narrated by a gaucho from Uruguay, as we see him as a little boy who encounters a flying donkey and plans to use him to make a lot of money. This is also a good cartoon, even if the narrator shifts back and forth from rhyming and not rhyming.

The film really gets going when Donald opens his second present, a book from Jose Carioca, who shows up and proceeds to talk Donald on a tour of the beautiful city of Baia. First, there is a beautifully drawn montage of the city set to a rather soothing song. Afterward, Donald and Jose actually go to Baia and dance the samba with the locals, including a very lovely young lady by Aurora Miranda, Carmen Miranda's daughter. This is the first of many segments in the film that put the animated characters into live action footage and the effect works quite well even today. One truly amazing part is when the dance gets very surreal and two men mock fight. They become silhouettes of roosters dueling and slowly turn back into men and it's an amazing bit of animation. The music is also really good here and Donald and Jose singing along with the locals never fails to make me smile. After the segment is over, what follows is a routine that never fails to crack me up. After coming out of the book, Donald and Jose are very small but Jose shows him to get back to normal size by blowing into his finger. Jose does it without any trouble but of course when Donald tries, things go awry. His hands get inflated as well as head, his body becomes like a stretched out balloon, and the top of his head stretches out very far. The music and Jose's reactions make it even funnier.

Donald's opening of the third present is the introduction of Panchito and man, does he arrive with a bang! He comes out, firing his pistols, and yelling a madman. This is when the three of them are christened the Three Caballeros and they sing the title song. (I know it's immature but whenever the lyric, "We're three gay caballeros" is sung, I can't help but think of Brokeback Mountain and snicker.) After the song, Panchito shows Donald his present, a pinata, and tells him of the tradition behind it: Las Posadas, where a group of children reenact the journey of Mary and Joseph, going from house to house and asking for posada (shelter) until they reach a friendly house, where festivities take place. This is told in a slide show type of presentation of painted images. Afterward, Donald attempts to break his pinata and after a lot of frustration (not understanding the tradition as a kid, I always thought Jose and Panchito were being mean to Donald by yanking the pinata away from him), finally manages to break it.

We're then treated to another tour, this time of Mexico. Donald learns the dances of both Patzcuaro and Vera Cruz, the latter being my favorite of the two parts. Watching Donald do his nutty dances and the woman he's dancing with trying imitate it is a sight. Both of these episodes are live action with the characters planed in and so is the segment at Acapulco Beach. After seeing a bunch of lovely women in bathing suits by the seaside, Donald puts on his own old-fashioned suit and joins them. Donald's such a wolf in this part. He's chasing the women around, trying to kiss and hug them, even doing so blindfolded. (It'd be interesting to see what the reaction would be if Daisy saw this!) Jose and Panchito have to basically tear Donald away to get him back home. Next comes a portion taking place in the skies above Mexico City, with another lovely Mexican woman singing while Donald swoons over her. This is kind of slow part to the film, with Donald quacking the song while flying around the woman with flower petals around his neck, but, man, do things get crazy when Donald gets kissed!

The last segment up to the end is a surreal sequence of events similar to the infamous "Pink Elephants" scene from Dumbo. It's filled with crazy colors, flowers, Donald hallucinating about Jose and Panchito (Jose singing a helium-esque voice, which is quite funny) and such. The best part is when Donald winds up among a bunch of cacti and a woman in a sombrero uses a conductor's stick to bring the cacti to life and make them dance. Not only does Donald dance with the woman but a bunch of cacti become imitations of him, then grow into various large sizes while continuing to dance. It's crazy but once again, the animation here on the cacti on is very impressive. (Salvador Dali, who worked with Disney on some stuff, must have loved this.) The segment and movie wind down as Jose and Panchito reenter the film, with Donald ending up inside a bull outfit and Panchito "fighting" him. The outfit is full of firecrackers which are inevitably lit and explode for a whopper of a finale.

To sum it up, despite some minor flaws, The Three Caballeros is, at the end of the day, a very well made and enjoyable film. It's surreal, funny, charming, and informative about South American cultures without coming across as a propaganda piece. The animation is incredible, especially in the surreal segments; the combination of animated characters with live action people is pulled off very skillfully; it's a colorful, beautiful looking film; and the music is very memorable. It may not be one of Disney's classics but it's definitely a standout in the series of package films produced during the war.

Disney: Saludos Amigos (1942)

This is an interesting curiosity piece in the history of Walt Disney Studios. When I was a kid, I saw the follow up to this film, The Three Caballeros, quite a few times and thoroughly enjoyed it but I'd never even heard of this one until I was much older and saw it for the first time when I was 22. It's not that well known to the general public and only the most die-hard Disney fans have probably seen it. In order to understand why that is so, you have to put the film into context. This film falls into the war period of the studio, the time when the studio had  made its original classics Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi but wouldn't get back into its stride until 1950 with Cinderella. It was put into production in early 1941 and was released in Argentina in 1942 and America in 1943. By that time, the attack on Pearl Harbor had led to the studio being taken over by the United States military in order to produce propaganda and training cartoons, which halted all of Disney's other planned features for the latter part of the decade.

The purpose of Saludos Amigos was to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and South America as part of the Good Neighbor Policy. In order to do so, the U.S. Department of State commissioned a Disney goodwill tour that was intended to lead a film to that would be shown in both South American countries and the U.S. They chose Disney because several Latin America governments had ties to Germany and the purpose was to counteract those ties since Disney's characters and films were popular in those countries. Walt, acting as ambassador on the trip, and twenty members of his staff were given tours of countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru in order to inspire the film.

Not that I've given you your history lesson, let's talk about the film itself. It acts as a documentary of South American life and tradition, with 16mm film footage of the actual Disney team touring, experiencing and drawing the various cities and local traditions, with four cartoon segments inspired by the artists' experiences. The first cartoon shows Donald Duck as an American tourist at Lake Titicaca, meeting the locals as well as dealing with a stubborn llama. The second portrays a small mail plane named Pedro in his first flight alone to pick up air mail in Mendoza, which turns out to be a very dangerous trip. Next, we have a segment involving Goofy planted in the pampas of Argentina in order to learn the ways of a gaucho. And the finale of the film features Donald once again and introduces the suave, sophisticated parrot Jose Carioca, who shows Donald the sights of Brazil, as well as the samba.

While it's not one of Disney's best films by far and it even feels really dated, Saludos Amigos is an interesting time-killer. It's only 41 minutes long, so you won't be sacrificing much of your time for one thing. The documentary footage of the Disney artists exploring South America can sort of be viewed as a precursor to the True Life Adventures that would come later. The real footage of the various cities and countryside is quite beautiful to look at. While the footage is, naturally, worn by time, there are still good, colorful prints of it that bring out the beauty of the countryside.

The cartoon segments range from ordinary to funny to inspired. As much as I love Donald Duck, the Lake Titicaca segment with him honestly brings nothing new to the table and is just made of hijinks that he gets into, none of I which I find as funny as the stuff in his theatrical shorts. The segment featuring Pedro the mail plane does have some impressive animation, particularly when Pedro becomes lost in a storm and fights furiously to get the mail through. (Interestingly, the segment proved to be a bit controversial in Latin America. Rene Rios Boettiger, a Chilean cartoonist, saw the character of Pedro as an insult to Chileans and created a popular comic character called Condorito as a sort of payback to Disney.) My personal favorite segment is watching Goofy trying to learn the ways of the gaucho. It has all the elements of his popular How to... theatrical shorts, specifically How to Ride a Horse, and is enjoyable. My favorite part is when he tries to lasso an ostrich with bolas and the slow-motion segment that results. Suddenly, the segment goes back to normal speed and then gets faster and faster, with the narrator's voice speeding up accordingly. When he begins to narrate the next part, the man's voice is still cracked and he has to recover from it, which I can't help but snicker at. I also like when Goofy gets caught lip-synching to a record of a gaucho triste song by the classic gag of the record skipping. Finally, the finale segment Aquarela do Brazil (Watercolor of Brazil), starts out with some very impressive animation as we see an artist paint the scenery with watercolors. There are some points where he draws one thing and then adds more detail to turn them into something else. For example, he draws what looks like a cluster of bananas but then adds black paint to it, morphing them into a bunch of toucans. He also draws what appears to be a flower but when a bee flies into the petals, it begins to shake and morphs into Donald Duck, who's then introduced to Jose Carioca. Jose was be put to much better use in The Three Caballeros later.

The only real complaint I have about the film is the narrator throughout. I know it was traditional back then for these types of documentaries and educational films to be narrated but my biggest problem is how stuffy and cheesy the narrations always were. The narrator isn't that bad during the live action segments since those required narration as well as the Gaucho Goofy segment but he got in my nerves during the Pedro cartoon. He feels way too involved in the story and characters for me, instead of being simply an impartial observer, as he is in the rest of the film, which I prefer when it comes to narrators. That probably sounds silly and it's just my personal preference to this kind of film but that's how I feel.

Saludos Amigos is entertaining and informative but it's simply not one of my favorite Disney films. It's just far too simple, bringing nothing to the table other than being an above average documentary with some amusing cartoons sprinkled throughout, and it's dated. It simply served its purpose and then faded away into obscurity. It's available on DVD but people other than hardcore Disney fans probably know of it. However, it was popular enough to lead to The Three Caballeros, which I feel is vastly superior and entertaining, as we'll see next.

Disney: The Jungle Book 2 (2003)

Since the early 90's, Disney, for some reason, has decided that a good majority of its classic animated features need one or two sequels. While the sequels to Aladdin and The Lion King were actually quite enjoyable and well made, most of them, while not out and out horrible, do nothing more than make you ask one simple question: what's the point? Not only are these sequels not needed seeing as how most of their parent films were perfect on their own, they almost always end up adding nothing to the story and by the end of each one, you're left wondering why this was necessary in the first place. And that leads us to our subject here, The Jungle Book 2, a sequel produced by Australia's Disney-Toon Studios thirty-five years after the release of the beloved original. The only difference is that this was actually released in theaters, even though it was originally planned to be straight to video. I actually first heard about when I picked up an issue of Disney Adventure magazine in the grocery store one night and saw an article about it. My reaction was surprise. The last thing I was thinking of was that there was going to be a sequel to a movie from my childhood. I was interested in seeing it, although that wasn't until a year later when it was on cable. My thoughts? Same as always with these sequels: it's okay but it's so generic that it's not even worth existing.

Taking place some time after the events of the original, this film shows Mowgli adapting to life in the man-village and with his adopted family. Although he's made friends with Shanti, the girl he followed into the village at the end of the original film, and her little brother Ranjan, Mowgli misses the freedom of the jungle and his animal friends, especially Baloo. At the same time, Baloo is not dealing well with the fact that Mowgli is no longer with him and he sneaks off to visit him. After he does so, a commotion causes him and Mowgli to run back into the jungle. Unbeknownst to Mowgli, who's resolved to live in the jungle for the rest of his life, Shanti and Ranjan, as well as most of the villagers, are in the jungle looking for him. Also, the evil Shere Khan, furious at Mowgli for what he did to him, is determined to have his revenge against the boy.

You can immediately tell that this film was originally meant to be direct to video. It has that low budget, generic look to it that all of Disney's direct to video sequels have. To be fair, the look of the movie is nice and colorful, but the animation and production design are nowhere near the level of the original. I don't know if it's the low budgets or what but this stuff just never has the same level of animation and design as their predecessors. A good thing is that the character designs are kept very true to those in the original, except for one: Kaa. For some reason, he's now green instead of brown. Why? Did someone just decide green was more snake-like in color or something? Other than that, though, the character designs are pretty much the same. But the technicality is the least of this film's problems.

Mowgli is voiced by Haley Joel Osment this time around. First off, Osment's performance isn't half bad with what they give him to work with but to me, Bruce Reitherman sounded more natural as a kid. The set-up for Mowgli's character in this film is acceptable: he misses the jungle and wants to experience the freedom of being wild again. But as soon as he gets into the jungle, he begins to miss Shanti and the other villagers, mainly after he hears they're looking for him. He's actually surprised that they're looking for him, since he'd been punished earlier for almost leading the village kids into the jungle. And that right there is something that gets me: because he was punished, he thought that everyone in the village hated him? All that time he was living with the wolf pack, did he never get punished for doing something wrong and learn that when adults are mad at you, that doesn't mean they hate you? I know Mowgli's just a kid but ten to eleven-year olds shouldn't be that naive. For another thing, the whole conflict between Mowgli wanting to stay in the jungle but also missing his village family could make for an interesting film but they never do anything with it other than have Mowgli mope around for each part of the problem and his ultimate decision as to where he's ultimately going to leave has no purpose since he and Shanti begin regularly visiting the jungle at the end of the film. So, there's no drama. Also, Mowgli's been living in the village for a good while now, right? Well, why is he still in just his underwear? Did they have no extra clothes for him or something? Give him some pants or a shirt, at least!

Baloo is voiced by John Goodman who, while being fairly good at emulating Phil Harris' personality, just doesn't have the same actual feel to him (maybe it's just because the voice is so much different but still). Baloo is fairly one-dimensional: he misses Mowgli, ends up accidentally kidnapping him from the jungle, the two of them go through the Bear Necessities and the same shtick as before, he tries to keep Shanti away from Mowgli, briefly tussles with Shere Khan again, and, in the end, makes the same decision he did in the middle of the original: Mowgli belongs in the man-village. And again, what was the point of Baloo's hard decision when he's going to see Mowgli every now and then? That happy ending really derails the implications of the major conflict of the story.

Bagheera is voiced by Bob Joles, who actually does an excellent job of capturing Sebastian Cabot's wisdom and authority figure personality. And he's barely in the film. Yeah, he's the returning main character from the original that has the least amount of screen-time. When he is onscreen, he's involved in ridiculous slapstick involving either Colonel Hathi, Baloo, or Ranjan. Such a shame that they get someone who has the same feel as the great actor who portrayed the original and yet they do little with him.

Jim Cummings plays a multitude of characters in this film and while he gets to show his range of voices, he fails to capture the spirit that the characters' original actors did. The character he plays who's onscreen the most is Kaa, back to haunt your dreams with his hypnotic powers and questionable morals towards his younger victims. Like Sterling Holloway, Cummings also often voices Winnie the Pooh but unlike his predecessor, he just can't seem to shake his Pooh voice when he's doing Kaa. I don't if it was because Holloway did Kaa just a tiny bit deeper in voice or what but Cummings just isn't as menacing and sounds like Pooh with a hiss. His hypnotic encounter with Shanti, while nowhere near as much as those in the original with Mowgli, does have some of the same sexual connotations as he actually brushes her hair while hypnotizing her, makes her follow his gaze wherever he turns, and leads her onto a rock so he can eat her (Ranjan saves his sister, however). It's weird how he didn't even try to hypnotize Mowgli this time. Cummings also plays Col. Hathi, using a pompous English voice I've heard him use many other times and he honestly doesn't sound much like J. Pat O'Malley. Other than voicing one of the vultures (I honestly can't remember which one), he also voices Flunkey, who turns out to be that monkey who annoyed King Louie during I Wanna Be Like You. I don't really have an opinion on this voice since Flunkey never spoke in the original. Oh, and by the way, King Louie isn't in this film. It was due to some sort of legal issues and they never explain his absence other than he just left. Way to go, above and beyond.

The best returning character in this film by far is Shere Khan. In this movie, he's voiced by the awesome actor Tony Jay, a British guy who had one of the deepest, most commanding voices ever. Jay sounds so much like George Sanders here that it's like he's risen from the grave. He brings the same kind of cool sophistication and menace to the character that his predecessor did and does it very well. Shere Khan's first appearance in the movie is awesome, with his paw crushing the coconut head of a makeshift Mowgli that Baloo had made and growling Mowgli's name in pure hatred. Since he's out for revenge, Khan is portrayed with a whole lot more rage than before, but he doesn't lose his droll sense of humor. Not only does Jay sound like Sanders but the animators did a good job of keeping the mannerisms Khan had in the original. He also lurks in the shadows for most of the film, making him all the more menacing. His best moment is when he finally finds Mowgli and tells him why he's going to kill him. The conflict between him and Mowgli should have been the focus of the entire movie, maybe with Khan kidnapping Shanti and having Mowgli venture into the jungle into a trap. (That's almost what he does to begin with.) Also, while Shere Khan isn't killed at the end of the movie, you still have to realize that he has no way to escape the trap he's imprisoned in and will probably starve to death eventually. Kind of dark when you think about it.

The girl whom Mowgli followed into the jungle at the end of the original film is revealed to be Shanti, a young village girl who lives with her parents and little brother Ranjan. Voiced by Mae Whitman, Shanti's personality isn't that interesting, to be honest. While she's not a bad character, there's not much to her. She denies liking Mowgli, even though she flirts with him; she has to babysit her little brother during their trek through the jungle; gets her feelings hurt and runs off when she finds out that Mowgli had Baloo intentionally scare her; helps Baloo somewhat to save Mowgli from Shere Khan; and in the end, goes with Mowgli in his little visits to the jungle. She at first thinks the jungle is dangerous but by the end, finds out that's not entirely the case. And that's it. She's just a blank slate. But she's not as bad as her little Ranjan, voiced by Connor Funk. This little guy is nothing but a handicap to Mowgli and Shanti while they're in the jungle. He causes trouble, tries to act all brave, and looks up to Mowgli as some big brother figure but they never do anything with it. He's just the typical rambunctious little kid that's supposed to make you go, "Aw!" I don't find him to be anything other than annoying. Also, he's apparently picked up some bad habits from Mowgli because he too wears nothing but underwear.

John Rhys-Davies voices Shanti and Ranjan's father. It pains me for Rhys-Davies to have be involved with this because he's a good actor. His character literally has nothing to do other than to be the jolly father with a strict rule system who feels bad for punishing Mowgli after he goes back to the jungle. One thing they could have made something out of is when he tells Mowgli that the jungle is dangerous and to prove it, shows him some scarred claw marks on his arm. Could those be the work of Shere Khan? Never touched on and it's too bad because that could have made for an interesting conflict with him meeting up with the animal that originally attacked him and is now after Mowgli. Instead, all he does is spend a good portion of the movie searching for Mowgli, Shanti, and Ranjan with the search party in the jungle. Such a waste. And as for the last new character, there's Lucky, a new vulture voiced by Phil Collins(!). This guy is entirely pointless. He's strictly comedy relief and not a very good one either, constantly taunting Shere Khan for how Mowgli humiliated him. At one point, Khan grabs him and evilly says, "Isn't it ironic that your name is Lucky?" before apparently killing him. I loved that moment when I first saw it because it seemed so dark for Disney nowadays... and then, Lucky shows up at the end to taunt the imprisoned Khan some more. That irritated me so much. What did Khan do to him instead of eating him? Did he just beat him up? That shouldn't have been the case. When you cross Shere Khan, your ass should be grass! I can't get across how disappointed I was in that turn of events.

Biggest problem with the film? The story or rather lack thereof. Granted, I said the story of the original film wasn't that strong either but the characters, animation, and songs picked up the slack there. As we've seen here, though, this movie's animation isn't up to snuff, the characters from the original as well as the new ones are one note for the most part, and most of the songs are just retreads of those from the original (I'll get to the actual new ones in a minute). In fact, this movie is like a half-hearted xerox of the original: Mowgli spends time with Baloo in the jungle, singing the Bear Necessities and going through the same shtick; Kaa hypnotizes someone; there's a scene at the ancient ruins minus King Louie; there's a final confrontation with Shere Khan, where Baloo tries to save Mowgli (why can't Bagheera battle Khan?); and Mowgli, although he does actually decide this time, follows Shanti to the village. This movie is doing nothing more than going through the motions that fans of the original remember. Instead of telling a new story, the filmmakers are just retreading the same old ground with some new characters thrown in and making Mowgli's return to the jungle an overnight sleepover more than anything else. There are hints of better stories to be hold here, as I described, but they do nothing with them. They also retread material from other Disney films. When Shanti's father scolds Mowgli for almost leading the kids into the jungle, he says lines such as, "I'm very disappointed in you" and, "You deliberately disobeyed me!" Sound familiar? (*cough* The Lion King *cough*) And by the way, "Yeah, man!" was awesome in the original but it's used way too much here.

Unlike the atmospheric and mysterious music score of the original, this movie's score by Patrick Griffin is completely forgettable. I don't remember a single tune from that generic score. Songs from the original like Bear Necessities, My Own Home, and I Wanna Be Like You are given new versions here. While I thought John Goodman and Haley Joel Osment's singing of Bear Necessities was okay, Smashmouth's I Wanna Be Like You was not up to par. It's like, "Yeah, King Louie's not in this film but his song was memorable so we're going to put in a less than acceptable version of it." As for the new songs, Osment sings Mowgli's song Jungle Rhythm. The song itself and Osment's singing aren't that bad but it's not memorable. As John Goodman singing Baloo's song W-I-L-D? Again, Goodman isn't bad but the song itself... are you kidding? Once again, generic! (Also, Timon and Pumbaa appear in that song. Why? Despite the continuity logistics that they live in Africa instead of India, all it does is make me wish I was watching The Lion King instead of this.)

The Jungle Book 2, like so many of these other Disney sequels, has no reason to exist. In its short running time of 69 minutes, it accomplishes precisely nothing other than giving us an uninspired retread of the original, only with the characters we love not as interesting and new characters that we don't give a crap about. But, this movie made over $135 million worldwide so I guess little kids who either liked the original or had never seen it but thought this looked cool won out. I have no problem with Disney making sequels to their classic films but the bottom line is that they seriously need to actually try and not treat their audience like morons when they do so.

Disney/Stuff I Grew Up With: The Jungle Book (1967)

I'll just come out and say it: I love Disney. I may not like what it's become in recent years but this studio's animated features and short subject cartoons were a big part of my childhood and I still adore them to this very day. I think like most people, when I got older I figured Disney was just for little kids and that I should leave it behind but when I began rewatching a good majority of the movies and cartoons, I realized the difference between kids movies and family movies and that Disney's classic stuff has something for all ages. This will be the first of a series of posts where I talk about Disney's films and most of these will be paired up with Stuff I Grew Up With for obvious reasons.

Ironically, our first entry is the very last film that Walt Disney had any active involvement in whatsoever: The Jungle Book. I decided to start with it because it's one of the first movies I ever saw in my entire life. I couldn't have been no more than four or five years old when I first came upon this movie and therefore, it remains a big part of my childhood. While I loved it then and I still love it now, when I look at it as a critical adult, I do believe it's flawed. That said, it still has a lot of the elements that make a good Disney film: loveable characters, great animation and backgrounds, and catchy music and songs. It even has some bizarre overtones that I think are much more pronounced than those labeled onto other Disney films (and most of  I believe are just people trying to see what they want and make something perverted when it's not intended to be so).

Based on Rudyard Kipling's classic novel, The Jungle Book tells the story of Mowgli, an orphaned Indian boy who is discovered in the jungle by the panther Bagheera, who takes him to live with a family of wolves. Ten years later, the man-hating tiger Shere Khan returns to the jungle and the wolf pack decides that Mowgli must leave the jungle to ensure his safety. Bagheera offers to take Mowgli to a nearby "man-village" and the two set out on their journey. However, Mowgli, having spent his entire life in the jungle, doesn't want to leave, creating the main conflict of the story. Along the way, Mowgli makes friends with the easy-going, fun-loving bear Baloo, who encourages Mowgli to stay in the jungle and now Bagheera must find a way to make Baloo see how much danger Mowgli's in before Shere Khan finds him.

One of the biggest issues many people have with the film is that, in relation to Kipling's story, it's basically The Jungle Book in-name-only and the only thing it shares are the characters. While I've never read the original book, I've heard it's quite dark in tone and very violent. In fact, Bill Peet, a screenwriter at the studio, wrote the first treatment of the film in keeping much of the dark tone. However, Walt didn't like the darkness and wanted to concentrate more on the characters. This caused a falling out between the two men and Peet never got a chance to make up with Walt due to his death. Even more to the point, Walt told his animators and song-writers to completely ignore the book. Needless to say, Walt's interest was somewhere other than making a faithful adaptation. Accordingly, after the lukewarm reception of The Sword in the Stone, Walt was interested in coming back with a universally-appealing movie and used Kipling's story as little more than a springboard to do so. But what I'm getting at is that many purists deride the film because of its unfaithful dramatization of the original story and so does that, in essence, make the film bad? To me, no. Again, I've never read the book but as I've said before, I think movie adaptations should be judged as to whether or not they're good movies rather than whether they're faithful to the source material. To that end, Disney's The Jungle Book is a good, if flawed, movie in my opinion. Some may argue that Walt was too wholesome for something dark but if you look at a good majority of the Disney animated features, they have a lot of dark moments in them. Also, Disney is capable of taking dark subject matter and keeping the overall tone and feel while still making it uniquely Disney (The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a good example of that) but that just wasn't Walt's intent at the time and I don't think he should be faulted for that.

The overall design of this movie is where I think it shines very brightly. To me, the jungle backgrounds are absolutely stunning and well-designed with a lot of depth to them. From what I can gather, the xerographic system of animating that had first been used in One Hundred and One Dalmatians was refined so that hand-inked details could be combined with xerox cels. I can think you can actually see that when you look at the film. The backgrounds look much more natural and not as artificial as those in One Hundred and One Dalmatians. The opening title sequence where the camera pans throughout different areas in the jungle is a great showoff of the backgrounds. I especially like the way the ancient ruins where King Louie lives looks as well as the sunset shot in the middle of the jungle looking outward. It's beautiful. The nighttime shot with the river is also breathtaking. Needless to say, The Jungle Book is a very well designed film.

The Jungle Book is well-revered among Disney lovers for having some of the most beloved characters ever. But let's start with the main protagonist, Mowgli the man-cub, voiced by Bruce Reitherman (son of director Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman). Some people have said that they find him annoying but I don't. He may be a complainer and hard-headed but he has good reason to: he's being yanked out of the only home he's ever known against his will, even if it is for his own good. One thing you can't say about Mowgli is that he's fearless. When he finally encounters Shere Khan in the film's finale, he stands right up to the tiger and tells him he's not afraid of him. Yet, his fearlessness is what tends to get him in trouble, leading to either Bagheera or Baloo having to save him. Still, I don't find him annoying (again, I seem to have a high tolerance for "annoying" characters in films, so take that for what it's worth). My only problem with Mowgli as a character is that by the end of the movie, I don't feel like he's gone through any kind of arc. Throughout the ten years of his life, all he's done is walk around the jungle in his underwear and during the story of the film he's been kidnapped by an orangutan, hypnotized and basically molested twice by a pedophile snake (I'll get to him soon), been told by his panther guardian that he must leave the jungle, argued with him about it, made friends with Baloo, thought that Baloo had betrayed him at one point, forgives Baloo after he saves his life, and he ultimately goes to the "man-village" for the sole reason that he saw a pretty girl. In fact, after Shere Khan is defeated and sent packing, Mowgli has no reason to leave the jungle other than the practical reason that he doesn't understood but he still leaves. Walt's reason for Mowgli following the girl into the village is because he's never seen another human in his life and while that may be a part of it, I think his main reason for doing so is obvious: he thinks she's hot. Granted, it's handled very tastefully since they're kids but still, you can't watch the way she looks at Mowgli and the way he looks at her and tell me there's not more than meets the eye there. But back to what I was originally saying: I just don't feel that Mowgli's learned anything or matured in any way. Again, yes he went to the village and he should live with humans instead of animals but he never learns why he should do so. I just can't help but think this by the end of the movie each time.

For many, the most lovable character in the film is good ole papa bear Baloo, voiced with great zeal and enthusiasm by Phil Harris. Bagheera calls him a jungle bum but Baloo is in reality the type of guy you'd want to hang out with. He's easy-going and fun-loving, with a great love of life and teaches Mowgli to just go with the flow of life. He's the first real friend that Mowgli has and while he does start out as more than a little irresponsible, he grows to genuinely care about Mowgli like he was his own son. Even though he wants Mowgli to stay in the jungle with, the realization that Shere Khan will kill him if he finds him makes him realize he must take the boy to the man-village. When Mowgli runs away from him feeling betrayed, Baloo says that if anything happens to him, he'll never forgive himself, showing how much he's matured as a character. He ends up putting himself in great danger by fighting Shere Khan and almost getting killed in the process. The scene after the final battle where Mowgli cries over Baloo's apparently dead body is very touching, showing the love Mowgli had developed for his papa bear. What's just awesome is when Baloo regains consciousness while Bagheera is giving an impassioned, flattering speech about the bear's courage and sacrifice. It's just hilarious to watch Baloo say stuff like, "I wish my mother could have heard this" while the speech is going on and when Bagheera and Mowgli are about to leave, Baloo says, "Hey, don't stop now, you're doing great!" It just sums up his character so well. And at the end of the film when Mowgli first sees the girl walking from the village, Baloo's reaction is, "Forget about those. They ain't nothing but trouble." So awesome. By the end of the movie, Baloo obviously still wants Mowgli to stay in the jungle but Bagheera makes him understand that he's where he belongs now. And to end the movie in the best way possible, Baloo and Bagheera, now having become friends themselves, walk back into the jungle singing Bear Necessities. It's a really upbeat way to end the movie and nobody could do it like Baloo.

My favorite character in the movie is actually Mowgli's panther guardian Bagheera, voiced by Sebastian Cabot. I always like wise old characters like him. Being a panther, he could easily have eaten Mowgli when he finds him as a baby but instead decides to have him adopted by a family of wolves. He's also the one who volunteers to take Mowgli to the man-village and during the trip, he tries to act like a stern authority figure to Mowgli as much as he can but it's obvious that he genuinely cares about him. The two constantly argue about Mowgli's going back to the man-village and Bagheera actually gets so fed up with the boy at one point that he leaves him to fend for himself. However, when he hears a sign that Mowgli may be in danger, Bagheera quickly rushes back to help him. He's not at all amused to find Mowgli with Baloo, since he feels the bear is a bum and is a bad influence on Mowgli. He does indeed leave Mowgli with Baloo but when he finds out that Mowgli has been kidnapped, he and Baloo immediately go to the rescue. Afterward, he manages to make Baloo understand the danger Mowgli's in but that doesn't end well when Mowgli runs away. As I said, Bagheera is good enough to make a great speech about Baloo when it seems like Shere Khan killed him... and is none too happy when he discovers that Baloo was alive the whole time but since Mowgli's happy, he lets it go. Ultimately, he does encourage Mowgli to follow the girl into the man-village, knowing it's what's best. Bagheera may seem like a stern person but he does have a heart of gold and that's what makes him so loveable. And I can't help but smile at the end when he and Baloo go back into the jungle. He's clearly come to like Baloo and maybe Baloo can teach him to enjoy life the way he does. Him singing the Bear Necessities along with Baloo seems like a good start.

Another good set of characters is the Jungle Patrol of elephants, led by the pompous windbag Colonel Hathi, voiced by J. Pat O'Malley. Hathi's the typical blowhard English colonel, always bragging about his winning of the Victoria Cross and ordering his troops around. My favorite scene with him and the other elephants is the inspection scene, where Hathi, after telling them to dress up the line, actually smacks Winifred, his wife, on the butt when she doesn't do so! There is no way you could get away with that in Disney films nowadays. I also like the variety of the elephants in the inspection: the one whom he tells to take care of his trunk (who also says he's going to try to be transferred to another herd); the one that's always chomping on a leaf; one that's apparently been in a fight since he has a black eye; one that grins and Hathi immediately tells him to get rid of it, saying, "This is the army!"; the one he tells, "Eyes front" to; and the one he gives a quick buzz-cut to. Backing up a bit, that Victoria Cross speech Hathi gives is great, especially his part about discipline and when he breaks his bamboo twig by leaning on it. The only other elephants that get any real characterization are Hathi's wife Winifred (Disney veteran Verna Felton in her final role) and his young son (Clint Howard). I like how Winifred knows a whole lot more than her husband and confronts him when he refuses to look for Mowgli. My favorite part is when she threatens to take over his command if he doesn't look for Mowgli, causing Hathi to yell, "A female leading my herd?! Utterly preposterous!" (The joke is that elephant herds are led by females in reality.) As for their son, there's not much to say about him other than he briefly befriends Mowgli and is the one who convinces his father to find him. Before we move on, I have to mention something about the elephants that always makes me laugh. It's when Hathi decides to look for Mowgli and he's whispering to his lieutenant. The other elephants put their ears up to try to hear him. Unfortunately for them, Hathi then yells, "Company!", causing them to bang their heads together. That never fails to make me break up laughing.

Many have considered King Louie, voiced by Louis Prima, to be one of three villains in the movie and while he kind of is (seeing as how he tries to find out about fire from Mowgli and God knows what he plans to do with that knowledge), he's definitely most likable. Aside from Baloo, he's also the most lively character in the film. His scatting and laid back persona make him quite likable, even if he does have some malevolent intentions. His song, I Wanna Be Like You, is one of the funnest and most memorable in the film. My favorite parts are when he tries to shut up a monkey that won't stop loudly vocalizing during the song and, of course, his duet with the disguised Baloo. That's just awesome. King Louie is also quite a controversial character for many. Some call him a racial stereotype of African-Americans and cite their evidence as being that the film was made in the Civil Rights turmoil-filled late 1960's. Honestly, I've always thought that was someone trying to make a mountain of a molehill and trying to make a political statement when there's none to be made. Heck, Walt originally thought about casting Louis Armstrong in the role but, realizing what a controversy that would cause, instead cast Louis Prima, who may have had an African-American style voice but wasn't. And there you go, so I think people need to stop with the racist crap they throw on this character.

Disney veteran Sterling Holloway plays Kaa, the hypnotic snake. Remember when I called Kaa a pedophile? I stand by that. This character is freaky, with his soft voice (the fact that Holloway also voiced Winnie the Pooh just makes it creepier), spiraling hypnotic eyes, the way he sings to his victims, and, most of all, his obsession with wrapping Mowgli, who's basically naked, in his coils starting from the waist up (why doesn't he try to do that with anyone else?). Even as a little kid those scenes gave me a weird feeling and they still do. I really do feel there are sexual overtones to the scenes between Mowgli and Kaa and I'm clearly not the only one. Kaa has a bizarre following on the internet of people who get off on watching the scenes between him and Mowgli, as well as editing the scenes to have him hypnotize sexy women, both real and animated. If you don't believe me, go to Google image search, type in Kaa, and see what you get with the safety filters off. It's freaky. All that aside, Kaa is a memorable villain from the film in more ways than one (even more interesting is that in the original book, Kaa was a good guy). What's really creepy about him is that when he first appears, he looks and sounds like an absolute joke but you quickly find out how dangerous he can be. Also, unlike Shere Khan, who wants to kill Mowgli due to his hatred of man, Kaa simply wants to eat him because he's hungry and even seems disgusted with Khan's prejudice! He says Shere Khan gives him the shivers. Well, Kaa, you give me the shivers too so I guess we're even. (Freaking pedophile snake.)

Shere Khan is by far one of the coolest Disney villains ever. Voiced with great icy sophistication by George Sanders, Shere Khan doesn't make his first appearance in the movie until the last third of it but by that point, the film has done a good job of building him up. The wolf pack elder Akeelah says that Mowgli must leave the jungle because not even the entire wolf pack will be any match for Shere Khan in protecting the boy, building him up as a real threat. After that, there's so much more build up to him that you're ready for him to finally appear and when he does, he doesn't disappoint. In the scene where he's listening to Bagheera and Hathi talk about how Mowgli is lost in the jungle, Khan comes off as cool and calculating as a James Bond villain, laughing evilly to himself when Hathi mentions that Khan isn't within miles of their present location. When interrogates Kaa, you can tell that the snake fears him, especially when it seems as though Khan is immune to his hypnotic powers. But in the final battle with Mowgli and Baloo, Shere Khan shows that he's not all talk. He's truly ferocious and deadly in the battle, growling and roaring as he tries to kill Mowgli, and even almost killing Baloo. When he says to Baloo, "I'll kill you for this" before repeatedly scratching at him, he looks and sounds positively frightening. Shere Khan is definitely a force to be reckoned with. Even though his fear of fire is what causes him to lose the fight, he still remains swift, cunning, and deadly, all the trademarks of a great villain.

Lastly, I have to mention the Beatles-style vultures who appear at the end of the film and help Baloo in fighting Shere Khan. I know a lot of people like these characters but I never cared much for them. It may be because they show up so late into the film that it's hard for me to become attached to them or because I know little about the Beatles and whatnot but whatever it is, they never struck me as all that special. I do like the classic exchange, "Hey, Flaps, what we gonna do?" "I don't know. What you wanna do?" Some of their dialogue is kind of funny, like, "Things are right dead all over." "You mean you wish they were." Other than that, I don't have much to say about them.

The character animation in this film is, I think, some of the best Disney has ever done. The animals all look and move very realistic, with the only fantasy element being that they talk. The animation on Kaa is quite impressive. They really got the essence of a snake and the way a snake moves down pat. Shere Khan is also very well animated, especially the first scene with him where he slowly creeps up on a grazing deer. That looks exactly like what you would see in a nature documentary, as he crouches down and prepares to pounce. If you ever played with a cat before, you'd know that that's how they act before pouncing. Apparently, his stripes were an absolute nightmare for the animation team to keep consistent and I can imagine. Even the animation on Mowgli is good. Considering that he wears no clothes, they had to have made sure that the limb movements and such looked realistic and from what I can tell, they did a really good job.

Of course, you can't talk about a Disney movie without mentioning the music score and songs. As for the actual score by George Bruns, I feel that it suits the movie very well. The main theme is wonderfully mysterious and atmospheric during the opening credits and the trek through the jungle, give the setting a real sense of mystery. The music that plays during the scenes with Kaa for me just highlights how sexual those scenes are. I also really like the instrumental version of My Own Home, the song that the girl sings at the end, that actually plays at different points throughout the entire film. It has a melancholy type feel to it and does well in punctuating the fact that Mowgli will soon have to go back to his own kind. As for the songs by the Sherman brothers, no one can forget the Bear Necessities, sung by Phil Harris. When Mowgli actually sings along with Baloo, Bruce Reitherman doesn't sound that bad to me. But we all remember the song because it's such a fun and upbeat tune. I think that jazzy instrumental of it that plays at the very end is a perfect way to end the movie. As I said before about King Louie, I Wanna Be Like You is also a nice jazzy song that makes you want to get up and dance. The songs the Jungle Patrol sing to me are funny because of that one elephant interjecting his own thoughts about how pointless it all seems. As for Kaa's song Trust In Me, do I need to say anything else about how much of a perv that snake seems? That song and scene really does have a bizarre tone to it. And finally, there's That's What Friends Are For, the song that the vultures sing to cheer Mowgli up. Not bad, especially Shere Khan's interrupting of it with a great baritone solo, but again, probably my least favorite since I don't really think much of the vultures.

For many, including myself, the biggest problem with The Jungle Book is the story. I think it's evident that Walt and company were so focused on creating the memorable characters that they didn't pay much attention to the story they were telling. The story isn't bad, mind you, but it is pretty simple. There are some plotholes in it. The one I've always been curious about is the Jungle Patrol marching off to search for Mowgli. After they do so, you never see them again. I've always wondered if someone told them that Mowgli was found and that they could call off the search. That also raises the friendship between Mowgli and Hathi and Winifred's son. They only met once but their friendship was never really made concrete. Since you never see the elephants again after they go off searching for Mowgli, you never see any resolution with the young elephant being worried about Mowgli. I kind would have liked to have seen another scene between the two where the elephant tells Mowgli that he was worried about him and is glad that he's alright. I know that it's not an important part of the film but it's just something I've always wondered about. And I've already talked about how I felt Mowgli following the girl into the man-village felt a bit forced and didn't satisfy me. I also don't like how he doesn't say goodbye to Baloo. He just gets a dazed look on his face, shrugs his shoulders, and just walks on into the village, as if to say, "Sorry, pal, but I've got me a woman now!" Just didn't feel like a natural sendoff to their friendship.

The Jungle Book is far from perfect and while it is one of Disney's most popular classic animated films, I don't think it's among their elite. The story is simple and has some holes in it but when you look past that, it is a fun film with memorable characters, classic songs, and great animation and design. It was such a big part of my childhood that I can't help but adore it to this day, no matter how flawed it is, as is the case with a good majority of the stuff I grew up with.

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

It's fitting that I first encountered this movie whose basis is on mathematics as part of my high school geometry class (which, I will admit, I sucked at). It was one of those days where the teacher had nothing planned to teach so she decided for us to watch this film. I'd heard of the film, although I had no idea what it was about, and I vaguely knew who Russell Crowe was at that time because of Gladiator and I think I was aware that the film won several Oscars but if it hadn't been for the class, I honestly don't think I would have ever sought it out. Watching it was interesting experience. I had no clue that the movie was about schizophrenia nor did I completely understand what having that disease means. I believe I did know that it was based on a true story but that's as far as I knew. Anyway, what I'm getting to is that I did like this movie when I first watched it and I still enjoy it to this day. I know there are many who don't like it and that's fine but to me, this is quite a worthwhile film.

The film is a fictionalized account of the life of brilliant mathematician John Nash. It begins with him as a young prodigy at Princeton, brilliant but very eccentric and a bit antisocial. After refusing to follow the school's rules and attend classes, which almost results in him failing, Nash comes up with a groundbreaking new concept of governing dynamics that leads to him being placed as a code-breaking mathematician at MIT. Eventually, he meets a mysterious agent of the U.S. Department of Defense who informs him of a conspiracy by the Soviet Union to attack the United States with nuclear weapons and asks him to help find where the Russians are hiding the bomb by breaking secret codes. While this is going on, he and a former student of his fall in love and become married. Eventually, however, their dream becomes a nightmare, when it's revealed that Nash has schizophrenia and the conspiracy is all in his mind. The rest of the film dramatizes Nash's battle with the mental illness and how he eventually overcomes it.

First let me comment on the film's director, Ron Howard. I'm sure he needs no introduction as he's one of those directors who is wildly adored by both mainstream audiences and critics. The ironic thing is that until I heard about this film, I had no idea who Ron Howard was. I didn't know that little Opie Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show had not only become a filmmaker but a very successful one as well. Until I happened across an interview with him made at the time of the release of A Beautiful Mind, I didn't know anything about his movie career. Now, having said that, Howard, of course, is also one of those directors that, along with Steven Spielberg, is often criticized for being overly sentimental and that his movies are sometimes so sugary sweet and whimsical that they can make you puke. To be honest, while I admit that that fact is true about both directors, I can watch and enjoy a good majority of Spielberg's films (remember, Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies ever); I can't say the same about Howard though. There are only a few other films of his other than A Beautiful Mind which I do like, so you definitely won't see a section of The Directors devoted to him on this blog. Still, I will say that I do feel that this is one of his stronger films, one that walks that sentimental line just right.

When people criticize this film, the biggest complaint that's usually harped on it is that it takes too many liberties in telling the story of John Nash. Again, I had no idea who John Nash was and hadn't read the book by Sylvia Nasar when I first saw the movie so it didn't affect me. From what I can gather, this film's story is quite different from the actual events that it's based on but I don't understand why that should cause people to automatically hate it or why people made that a big deal about this movie being that way, since movies based on true stories are almost always different. I always say that if you want to see the true story, then watch a documentary about it. Filmmakers just naturally have to change things sometimes in order to make what they're telling easier to put on celluloid. The same goes for movies based on books. Some things that looked good in print might not do so well onscreen and that's why every movie based on a book can't be word for word like the book (and that's pointed at you, Stephen King!) You like the book, then read the book. I've honestly never cared about a movie being 100% true to its source material, just as long as it's done well. In my opinion, A Beautiful Mind is a movie that's just fine without having to be true to the source.

In the movie, John Nash is played by Russell Crowe, who seemed like an unlikely choice, especially since he had just done movies like L.A. Confidential and Gladiator. Say what you will about Crowe's reputation for being a bad boy and having a really bad temper (which may or may not have caused him to lose the Oscar for this film) but I think this movie proves that the man is a good actor despite his faults. He plays Nash with great subtlety and goes through a remarkable arc in the film as the character, both physically and mentally. From the beginning of the film, it's made clear that Nash is brilliant but eccentric, even arrogant in his regards to other people. He admits that he doesn't like people much and feels that college courses only dull the mind and render it unable to promote real creativity. He becomes determined to come up with a completely original concept in order to distinguish himself. He does become discouraged when the administrator tells him that his refusal to go to class, publish reports, or follow the rules doesn't warrant any placement for him but eventually, he becomes inspired by chance and makes an amazing breakthrough. After becoming a scientist at Wheeler Labs in Washington, he comes to find his routine there boring and beneath his talents. He becomes especially irritated when he's demoted to having to teach classes there (although that is where he meets his future wife).

Nash becomes quite pleased when the mysterious William Parcher of the Department of Defense gives him a more challenging assignment in code-breaking. However, he becomes increasingly obsessed with his work and the threat he's working to prevent as well as the shady underworld he believes he's plunged into begin to take their toll on him. He also becomes very concerned about his new wife, Alicia, who's also pregnant with his child. Eventually his paranoia and refusal to tell Alicia what's going on prompts her to call the local psychiatric hospital, whose staff have to take him by force. That's when it's revealed that he has schizophrenia and that Parcher, along with the conspiracy, his former roommate Charles and his little niece Marcie are all hallucinations. He initially refuses to believe that he's mentally ill but when he tries to remove a radioactive implant that was supposedly put in his arm, he can't find it and that's when he begins to understand. After going through insulin shock therapy, he's released but his life doesn't improve even with the birth of his son due to the side effects of the medication he has to take. In one touching scene, an old friend of his tells him that there are more important things than work but Nash is so tortured by the disease and by the medication that he asks, "What are they?" He eventually becomes so fed up with the side effects that he secretly stops taking the medication, causing him to plunge back into the disease and begin hallucinating again. He becomes so disassociated from reality that he almost accidentally kills his infant son and injures Alicia. However, he eventually accepts that Parcher and the others are imaginary because little Marcie never gets old when he sees her, even though it's been years since they first met.

Despite having finally accepted that these important people in his life aren't real, Nash continues to see them but refuses to begin taking the medication again, determined to find a new way to overcome his illness. He resorts to simply ignoring them and concentrating on his loving wife as well as working out of the library at Princeton and auditing classes. He eventually says goodbye to Charles and Marcie forever, acknowledging that while he appreciates them, he can't allow himself to interact with them anymore. Nash not only overcomes his schizophrenia but becomes a well-respected teacher at Princeton, eventually winning the Nobel Prize for his work. An important scene is when he's informed of his being considered for the prize and everyone in the cafeteria gives him the passing of the pens, a ritual for a professor who achieves the accomplishment of a lifetime. This is important because he witnessed such an event when he was a student at Princeton and he saw that it meant recognition. Nash is clearly very touched by this event now happening to him and modestly says, "That was most unexpected." The movie ends with the Nobel Ceremony in Sweden, where Nash credits his reasons, his recovery from mental illness, and his triumph in his field to the love and devotion of his wife, Alicia. It really is touching to see how far Nash has come, from an arrogant, antisocial prodigy to a horrifically ill victim to a humble teacher who has now acquired the highest honor imaginable and not because of his logic and reason but due to the heart of his wife.

Jennifer Connelly plays Alica Nash, a role that won her an Oscar. Like John Nash, she herself goes through an arc throughout the film. She starts out as a student of Nash's at Wheeler Labs and becomes bold enough to attempt to solve a complex problem that he presented to her and the other students. While he tells her that her solution to the problem is incorrect, she's smitten with him enough to ask him to dinner. At the aforementioned dinner, you can see the two of them becoming more and more infatuated with each other, to the point where Nash shows her how pick out shapes in the stars. The next time they meet, Nash admits that he is infatuated with her and that's when their relationship goes to the next level (Ron Howard has said that this picnic scene was supposed to lead to a sex scene but he decided not to film it). Eventually, the two are married but that's when things begin to go downhill. Alicia becomes frightened by Nash's growing paranoia and bizarre behavior, which comes to a head when Nash frantically tells her to get to hide out at her sister's home in the middle of the night. It's her who calls the psychiatric hospital and that leads to Nash being diagnosed with schizophrenia. She tries to make her husband understand that everything he thinks is real is in his mind and she watches in horror as Nash is put through a particularly horrific insulin shock therapy. This is clearly not what she expected to become part of when she married Nash.

Eventually she gives birth to her and Nash's son but she has to deal with her husband's battle with the disease and the ordeal the medication's side effects put him through. She admits to Sol, one of Nash's colleagues at the Princeton and Wheeler that she feels guilt about a secret desire to leave Nash and even anger towards him and God. However, she also says that when she looks at Nash, she remembers the person she married and that she loves him. Despite this, the overwhelming nature of the disease and the medication's side effects culminates in her angrily smashing the bathroom mirror after Nash can't respond to a sexual advance from her. Eventually, she discovers that Nash has stopped taking his medication and has lapsed into schizophrenia again, which results in her infant son almost being accidentally drowned by Nash and her even being injured by him when sees Parcher threatening to kill her. Despite this and a warning from Nash's psychiatrist that he could become dangerous as long as he's not on medication, Alicia decides to stay with him and support his decision to find a way to battle the disease without medicine. She remains his rock throughout the trials of his battle with the disease and supports him. She's eventually overjoyed to see Nash interacting with students in the Princeton library and at the Nobel Prize ceremony, she's really touched when Nash credits her with being the reason he's there and why he has triumphed. It really is touching to see that her devotion and love has led to this moment and has brought him back from the brink of self-destruction.

Of Nash's delusions, the most benevolent and supportive is Charles Herman, the supposed roommate he had at Princeton who became his closest friend. Played with zeal and likability by Paul Bettany, Charles starts out as a very important force in Nash's life, encouraging to stop staring into space and get out every once in a while, as well as picking him back up at one point when he's down and depressed about his inability to come up with his original idea. Later when Nash becomes a scientist at Wheeler Labs, Charles visits him again and when Nash tells him about Alicia, he encourages him. When Nash asks if he should marry Alicia, Charles simply tells him that nothing is for sure. And later when things begin to go bad for Nash and he becomes frightened about the world that he's plunged into, Charles offers to help him in any way he can. When Nash is forcefully taken to the psychiatric hospital, he thinks he's been kidnapped by Russians and when he sees Charles there, he thinks he's been betrayed. It's ironic because Charles has betrayed him in a way, just not how he thinks. It's interesting to note that when Nash relapses in schizophrenia in the last third of the film, he becomes menacing, a stark contrast to how he was before. He tells Nash to listen to Parcher when he's telling him to get rid of Alicia and the baby and before that, Nash thought Charles was watching the baby. Of course, the baby almost drowned in the bathtub because there was no one there to help him but the fact that in Nash's mind, Charles wasn't doing anything to help the baby and that Nash says that the baby was safe regardless is kind of chilling because it shows not only that Nash has lost his grip on reality more drastically than he ever had before but that his delusions have become much more sinister. After that, Charles tries to worm himself back into Nash's life, even after Nash tells him that he won't talk to him ever again. He even goes as far as trying to shame Nash into letting him back in, calling him pathetic. After that, Charles, along with Parcher and Marcie, continue to be around Nash, watching and waiting for him to acknowledge them again. Perhaps as a delusion, Charles was more than willing to be Nash's encouraging friend but when he was rejected, first by the medication and then by Nash outright ignoring him, he became resolved to get back into his "friend's" life in any way possible, even if that meant causing Nash mental torture. Good friend but as a delusion, not one who will be ignored, as with the other delusions.

The least impacting delusion but one that is quite important is Charles' niece Marcie, played by Vivien Cardone. Although at first dismissive of her, Nash grows to absolutely adore Marcie, happily catching her in his arms when she runs to him. However, she ends up being the one who unintentionally proves to Nash that she, Charles, and Parcher are hallucinations because Nash realizes that she's still a young girl even though it's been years since he first met her. She also may or may not be a sign that Nash has a great battle ahead of him. When Nash is telling Alicia and Dr. Rosen, his psychiatrist, that he intends to fight his schizophrenia off without medication, he hears a childlike sound and when he asks if what he heard was their baby, Alicia informs him that the baby is at her mother's house. Since Nash doesn't develop any other delusions, we can assume that what he heard was Marcie and the fact that he sees her nearby right afterward is a deeper clue. She definitely acts as proof of Nash's uncertain future when Alicia asks him if he would ever hurt her. Nash, seeing Marcie run behind Alicia, responds, "I don't know." That's an eerie moment because Marcie appearing so briefly like that makes her seem almost like a ghost. The scene where he says goodbye to Marcie and Charles is touching due to Marcie shedding a tear when Nash kisses her on the forehead and curls her hair. Like her uncle, though, Marcie refuses to accept that her "Uncle John" has abandoned her, encouraging him to embrace her at one point but being visibly angered when she's rejected. Like her uncle, she loves Nash in a way but will do anything to make him acknowledge her again.

The most sinister delusion and the one that begins to turn Nash's life into a nightmare is William Parcher, played by the awesome Ed Harris. Parcher first comes off as a dedicated government agent when he asks Nash to help him break secret Soviet codes in various periodicals. He calls Joseph McCarthy an idiot for his overzealous Communist hunting but says that he's not completely wrong, since he believes there are Soviets in the U.S. Since Nash is bored with his routine assignments at MIT, he's overjoyed to work on something challenging. Parcher also tells Nash that his inability to develop bonds with people can prove to be very useful in this assignment and Parcher is not too happy with Nash marrying Alicia, watching their wedding ceremony from across the street. This, among other similar incidents, is the start of Nash becoming iffy with Parcher. There was something mysterious about Parcher the first time you saw him watching Nash break the code in the Pentagon control room but he starts to become sinister not only when he's watching Nash and Alicia's wedding but before that when Nash sees him watching from the shadows when he's delivering classified envelopes filled with his research. After a very traumatic experience involving a car shoot-out, Nash really wants to quit his assignment and that's when Parcher reveals just how menacing he can be. He basically threatens to tell the Soviets that Nash works for him if he doesn't continue his work. Before that when Nash brings up Alicia's pregnancy, Parcher coldly states that he warned Nash how dangerous attachment could be and that it was his choice to marry her. After that, Parcher disappears until Nash relapses and he's the first one he sees. Nash is at first hesitant to believe him when Parcher tries to make him continue his work but Parcher calls Dr. Rosen a quack and that if Nash continues his work, the whole country will know he's a hero and he will be reinstated. After that, Nash breaks from reality again and Parcher is the one that causes him to accidentally hurt Alicia when he threatens her. He orders Nash to kill Alicia because she knows too much and points his gun at him. Needless to say, Parcher is the primary source of Nash's torment as he tries to cope with the disease, causing him to act like a maniac in public when he accuses him of being a traitor to the government. When Nash screams, "You're not real!" at him, Parcher answers, "You're still talking to me, soldier!" Right there, Parcher clarifies Nash's problem: his hallucinations will continue to torment him as long as he keeps acknowledging them. In a way, what he said may have given Nash what he needed to deal with his delusions. From then on, like Charles and Marcie, he ignores Parcher, even though he continues to shadow him all the time.

Supporting cast-wise, you've got Josh Lucas as Martin Hansen, Nash's college rival who acts all high and mighty towards Nash from the start, stating that he may get the transfer to Wheeler Labs instead of him. He even causes Nash some distress when he challenges him to a game that Nash loses, especially after Nash was convinced he would win. Their rivalry is friendly and never has any malice though and when Nash does indeed get the transfer to Wheeler, Hansen is good enough not to hold a grudge and congratulates him. Years later when Nash returns to Princeton to work out of the library, Hansen is now head of the Mathematics Department there and allows Nash to work there. When Nash tells Hansen that he won after all, Hansen says that nobody wins and the two men now consider each other equals. Hansen helps calm Nash down when he has a break from reality at Princeton and he's the one who calls it to Alicia's attention that Nash is now interacting with other students in the library. He's the one who ultimately gets Nash the job as a teacher at Princeton and he's there at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Sweden, watching his friend receive the highest honor.

Adam Goldberg and Anthony Rapp respectively play Sol and Bender, Nash's two college friends who join him at Wheeler. Not much to say about these two characters other than they come across as two good friends who kid Nash but are generally concerned about him when he begins to act strange. After Nash is treated for his schizophrenia and released, Sol visits him at home and tries to cheer him up but it doesn't work. Bender would have visited him but he was apparently too squeamish to do so. What I don't like is that after this scene, Sol and Bender are never heard from again and you never find out what happened to them. It doesn't make them look very sympathetic that they never contacted Nash again and makes it look like they just said, "To hell with him." Finally, there's Christopher Plummer as Dr. Rosen, Nash's psychiatrist who diagnoses the schizophrenia. He's sympathetic towards Nash's condition but he's also practical and doesn't give Nash much hope when he says he intends to conquer his disease without medication. He is good enough to allow Alicia to stay with Nash despite the danger implicated and we never hear from him again afterward, since Alicia never had to call him obviously.

If there's one thing A Beautiful Mind is good at dramatizing, it's how nightmarish a disease schizophrenia can be. When watching the film for the first time and knowing virtually nothing about its subject matter, I must admit that, like John Nash himself, I was quite shocked to discover that Charles Herman, Marcie, and William Parcher were nothing more than creations of Nash's diseased mind. Before the reveal, however, there were subtle hints given like how Nash always hears someone who is a delusion before he actually sees them. Also, when Nash first meets Marcie, if you watch you'll notice that as she runs among a group of pigeons, the pigeons don't react to her at all because she's not real. I never noticed that until I watched the special features on the DVD and Howard and company talked about it. Maybe I'm just gullible but I'd like to think it was more because of good filmmaking.

When the movie turns to Nash's diagnosis and he's placed in a psychiatric hospital, I feel that's where the dramatization of schizophrenia's impact becomes palpable. It's summed up very well in the scene where Nash is led into the room for his insulin shock therapy and as he's being fastened to the bed, Dr. Rosen tells Alicia, "The nightmare of schizophrenia is not knowing what's real. Imagine if you realized that the people and places most important to you were not gone, not dead but worse: had never been. What kind of hell would that be?" The feeling is punctuated even more when Nash is given the shot and falls unconscious, Alicia being the last thing he sees. A tear runs out of his right eye due no doubt to the realization of the nightmare his life has become. Again, if you'd seen this with no preconceptions about what the film is about, you'd be just as shocked as Nash is since the whole film has been told almost entirely from his perspective. Even after he temporarily stops having delusions, we see how tortured his life now is because of the effects of the medication and how that affects Alicia. There is some levity that stems from a scene where Alicia hears Nash talking to someone outside their house. Obviously, she fears he's seeing things again and when she asks who he was talking to, he says it was the garbageman. When Alicia informs him that garbage-men don't come at night, Nash says, "I guess around here they do." Then Alicia sure enough sees the garbageman outside the window and they both can't help but snicker at what she was thinking. Nash struggles to overcome his illness but as he eventually becomes stronger and more resilient enough to ignore his delusions, his triumph is satisfying on many levels.

I will say that there is one aspect of how Nash's schizophrenia is dramatized that I do find a bit questionable. It's the scene where, after delivering another envelope of supposed codes in periodicals, Nash is suddenly picked up by Parcher and a car chase/shootout ensues. After Nash is committed, Alicia finds that the building that he has been dropping his work off of has been abandoned but we can assume obviously that his schizophrenic mind imagined the electronic gate and there being people inside the building. But when Nash was having his delusion about the car chase, what was he really doing? Was he really sitting in a car and if so, then whose? Surely Parcher's car can't be real. Nash also doesn't seem to have his own car so that's out. Parcher also shoots one of the men in the other car and causes it to crash into the river. After that, Nash gets out of the car and looks at it. After that, the scene cuts to something else and we never see what else what happened. So what really happened? There was even a deleted scene where Nash and Parcher push his car into the river as well to cover up what happened but since this isn't in the final cut of the movie, we can ignore that. The question does remain: what was Nash really doing during all this? It does seem like this scene, as well shot and dramatized as it is, is a plothole. You also have to wonder what Nash was really doing when he first meets Parcher and is shown around a secret warehouse full of equipment. This is, however, much easier to explain as that Nash was simply wandering around the empty warehouse and talking to himself but you have to wonder why no one nearby heard him. Before we go on, I have to add that some may think I'm being too lenient on this film when I trashed High Tension for having very similar plotholes. The thing is, this is just one aspect of A Beautiful Mind and doesn't render the entire film useless, unlike High Tension, whose entire premise is made not only ridiculous but downright insulting to the viewer when revealed.

Another I'd like to praise A Beautiful Mind for is its clever subtle use of computer effects. There are quite a few CGI effects here but they're so well done and interlaced within the film that you probably don't notice them. Granted, the flashes of light that signify Nash's brilliance whenever he's looking for codes and patterns are obvious but what about those pigeons I mentioned that don't fly off when Marcie runs among them? CGI. Or the scene where Nash almost accidentally drowns his infant son? The water was CGI because they obviously couldn't put an infant in real water up to its nose and mouth. Most of the audience at the Nobel Prize ceremony at the end was computer generated as well. I honestly feel that with CGI being as in your face and overused as it is in movies nowadays, filmmakers should take a listen from this film and realize that this is how you use it well.

If Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg are the filmmakers always accused of being too sentimental and sugary sweet in their movies, James Horner is no doubt viewed that way among music composers. Yes, it's true that a lot of Horner's music is downright sappy and meant to tug at your heartstrings and he sometimes copies his own scores but I do like a good majority of his scores (his score for Titanic being one of them, so sue me) and the one he composed for this movie is no exception. A lot of it is vocalizing by singer Charlotte Singer mixed in with the music but I think it works well in punctuating the wonder of Nash's genius as well as the emotional distress his schizophrenia causes both him and his loved ones. And while the main theme, All That Love Can Be, is no doubt the exact type of thing that most critics loathe about Horner's music, I can't deny that listening to both the real song as well as the instrumental version that plays throughout the film does touch me in the context of the movie. Call me old-fashioned or soft or whatever you want but I do like this score.

For me, A Beautiful Mind is a beautiful film. Many will probably look at this review and be surprised that I would like something so Hollywood but a good movie is a good movie and that's the bottom line to me. Did it to deserve to win Best Picture that year at the Oscars and did Ron Howard deserve to win Best Director as well? That's debatable. I've always seen the Oscars as just a popularity contest that is fun to watch and nothing more but that's beside the point. The point is that while Ron Howard isn't one of my favorite directors, A Beautiful Mind is one of his high points for me and that's the way it is. Take that for what you will.