Plot: What’s it about?
The Disney version of Tarzan starts off with a young family getting deserted on an island. The parents are killed by a tiger, don’t worry it is Disney so this part is not shown, and the young baby is found and raised by a gorrila. The gorrila, Kala (Glen Close) promplty names the human Tarzan. She takes the boy back to the family of gorillas and their leader, Kerchak, (Lance Henriksen) doesn’t like the idea at all. Kala tells Kerchak that there is nobody left to take care of the infant. So Kerchak lets her take care of him and warns her that he better not get in the way.
They show Tarzan playing with the young gorillas as Tarzan is about five. Tarzan makes some friends with a gorrila about his age, Terk, (Rosie O’Donnel) and an elephant, Tantor. (Wayne Knight) They go on their adventures around the jungle and continue to get into trouble. When Tarzan (Tony Goldwyn) is a young adult an English ship shows up on the island and the wealthy family of two, Professor Porter (Nigel Hawthorne) and his daughter Jane (Minnie Driver) , want to see the gorillas in their natural habitat. They have a guide, Clayton (Brian Blessed) along with them who also happens to be a hunter as well. Tarzan rescues Jane from a crazed family of baboons and they immediately feel something between them. This is the first time that Tarzan has seen another human being before. He was never told that they existed or what he was. This whole time he just thougt he was a weird gorilla or something. The Porter’s are leaving and Tarzan has fallen in love with Jane and he agrees to Clayton’s plan to let them see the gorillas if they will stay a few days more. Clayton betrays them and at night he kidnaps Tarzan and the Porter’s in the hull of the ship. Clayton and his men then go back to capture the gorillas. How will Tarzan escape and save the day? I guess you will have to watch and find out.
I didn’t see Tarzan in the theater, but I heard a lot of good things about it from people that saw it. I enjoyed the movie on DVD and it looked spectacular. I don’t see this movie looking any better in the theater unless you saw it on a digital projector at selected theaters. I felt that the sound could have been better, but it served its purpose. The songs were not as irritating as they usually are to me either. Tarzan is an enjoyable film for the entire family. I highly recommend this for the family and at least a rental for any of you people out there with out any little ones around, like me. You should be able to find this at a store and over the internet for about $20. It is well worth the investment unless you are waiting for the deluxe special edition due out in April.
Video: How does it look?
This is an excellent transfer of this movie. The folks at Disney really paid attention to detail here. The movie almost takes on a 3-D effect at times. The colors are vibrant and even the darker scenes are crystal clear. Great stuff! This is one of the best looking DVD’s I have seen to date.
Audio: How does it sound?
There has been a big thing over the internet about Tarzan having some faulty soundtracks, the left front and left rear speakers combined in some parts of the film, and some DVD’s are just fine. I happen to be lucky to own the latter of the two. The 5.0 soundtrack sounds pretty good although I expected it to sound better. There is some bass in the soundtrack. It doesn’t hit as low as I would have liked and I guess it shouldn’t since there is no seperate channel for the low bass (.1). Why they didn’t release one theatrically either is a mystery to me. The surrounds play well in the jungle scenes and the action sequences. The music also sounds good on this DVD as well.
Supplements: What are the extras?
You get a good share of extras even though there is a Special Edition that is coming out in April. You get a Tarzan “read along”, a trivia game, Phil Collins music video for “Strangers like me”, a featurette on recording sessions with Phil Collins and N*Sync. There is a trailer for Tarzan presented in full screen and 5.1 sound. You also get a preview trailer for the next Disney movie Dinosaur in letterbox (1.66:1) and 5.1 sound. They both sound really good as well. The DVD rom section has the demo game for the Tarzan action computer game and it can also link you to a Disney website for kids as well. They even pick up the tab for your first two months of activity for the site as well. This is a job well done by Disney. They should continue to model their DVD titles after this one. Highly recommended unless you want to pay $15 more for the special edition in April. That will have this disc plus another one full of every thing you could possibly imagine about the making of Tarzan.
