Day: July 1, 2016

Finally.

Finally finally FINALLY. Hollywood has given us a Tarzan film about the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Not a monosyllabic swinging caveman. Not basically an American running around in a loin cloth. This film is freaking TARZAN of the freaking APES.

And of course the dumb ášš critics, the same ones who lambasted “John Carter” into oblivion, are dismissing it for no good reason.

This is quite simply the first Tarzan film I’ve ever seen that seems like it could have been drafted directly from an ERB novel. Featuring a sidekick who is clearly out of his depth (as was commonplace in the ERB novels) and a villain based on an actual historical figure, “The Legend of Tarzan” moves its way deftly between John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, as he tries to balance his life between being a British aristocrat and a denizen of the jungle.

Alexander Skarsgard is thoughtful and brooding as the ape man as he alternates between dealing with his current crisis and having flashbacks to his origins, and Margot Robbie is game as a 21st century woman portraying the distinctly 19th century Jane Porter (correctly portrayed as American, although her origins are somewhat different.) Christopher Weitz is comfortably evil, as we’ve grown accustomed to him being, and Samuel L. Jackson serves as something of a conscientious everyman as the historically based George Washington Williams. He provides a consistent 19th Century point of view of a man who has come through the civil war and is concerned about slavery as a broader issue.

What amused me is that one of the few positive reviews I’ve seen of the film likened Tarzan to Aquaman, which is funny considered I often likened Aquaman to Tarzan. Two lords of their environment who can communicate with animals.

Is it perfectly paced? No. The first half drags in places. But it’s totally worth sitting through. One review said in its headline that this is not your grandfather’s Tarzan. Yes, it is. This is the Tarzan that your grandfather read about as a kid and loved. You should, too.

PAD