Starring Twilight actor Kellan Lutz and former child actress Spencer Locke (Jenny from Monster House) as the main protagonists Tarzan and Jane, this new motion capture version of Tarzan made by Constantin Films (the same production company for films like The Neverending Story, the Fantastic Four films & Mortal Instruments: City of Bones) has slowly been released internationally since 2013 and finally came out a few months ago in the UK for a limited time, where it was a box office bomb! This one is gonna be interesting for me to review if you guys know about my dislike for motion capture like in Robert Zemeckis' movies! So will this movie be able to prove Tarzan can be good in 3 dimensions, or is it as bad as the other motion capture films I have seen? Well, I did do a review of the trailer for this about 6 months ago! Oh yeah....now I that remember...this is gonna suck isn't it? Well, let's find out!Story: Like I said in my trailer review, this one is a modernized version of the Tarzan story and honestly, it is much worse than I thought it was going to be! Not only is this unecessary (well, the whole movie is anyway), but everything else is just almost hilariously awful! The pacing is just so off, it's unbelievable! Trust me, it takes literally 5 minutes for the scene where Tarzan's parents die and the actual plot doesn't actually get going until halfway through the film! And what do they do to make up for it? Filler of course! Including a scene with Tarzan creepily going into Jane's tent & using her bra as a slingshot or just swinging on vines around the jungle to show off the 'eye candy' it has to offer! The tonal shifts are also absolutely jarring as, although it's aimed at kids, it can get quite dark and violent including scenes of Kala's mate and child being killed and Jane being bitten by a snake and probably getting poisoned. And no, cutting before the moment of impact does not mean it's being sensitive for children! There are even sci-fi/fantasy elements which are ridiculous including a scene where Tarzan has to save Jane from a giant mutated worm, clearly taking influence from Avatar next to the blatant in your face and shoehorned environmental message, which is bizarre as they want to take it seriously by not having the animals talk. But probably the worst part would be the narration, which is either used for exposition which can either be confusing or out of nowhere, or to explain what's going on when we can clearly see what's going on as if children won't be interested. This is particularly noticeable with the ending as it doesn't even feel properly resolved with the narration trying to make it seem like one, with cliched dialogue throughout & some very laughable lines thanks to the serious delivery & how ludicrous the actual script is! Yeah, as you can tell, the plot clearly wasn't what was on the creative team's mind during the making of this!
Animation: Obviously, like I mentioned in my review of the trailer, the animation is just awful! Have you seen the characters? They all look much too realisitc and takes you into several trips into the uncanny valley, thanks to the cartoony eyes and the underdefined skin looking too plasticy. It doesn't really help how inconsistent it is as some like Tarzan and Clayton look realistic in terms of design while Barbie looking Jane & her father look way too caricatured, and it's really creepy to watch. The character animation on the humans and gorrillas is also way too realistic, similar to Robert Zemeckis' movies, but it does fare better on other non human characters like the dinosaurs in the prologue or the giant bird thing that attacks Jane. But even at that, it still looks stiff & unpolished! The backgrounds of the jungle are really vast, especially during the vine swinging scenes and the scenes where Tarzan & Jane look around the caves, but clearly the animators knew nothing about the geography of the African jungles including a volcano with snow around it and a forest more at home in something like the Tinker Bell movies during the montage of Tarzan & Jane 'falling in love' to Coldplay's Paradise! In fact, the animation, and the movie as a whole feels like one giant PS4 cutscene made into a movie, only with more horrid voice acting and some of the worst motion capture I've ever seen since Mars Needs Moms!
Characters: If you think that the story is convuluted, then take a look at some of the most one dimensional characters I've ever had to witness! Tarzan (or JJ Greystoke) is just bland and uninteresting, even with his backstory with his parents as we never delve into how much it affected him or how he gradually befriended his ape family. By the way, Kellan Lutz's voice acting is just awful, and although the few lines of dialogue he has are supposed to be primitive, his line delivery makes it too competent to make it believeable! Jane is just the vapid love interest who I think is meant to be sassy, but it really falls flat and is even more uninteresting than the title character. And Spencer Locke, who I haven't seen anything of since her child acting days, at least tries with her acting, but she seems to have a tin ear when it comes to the context of the scenes, which I really can't blame her. Clayton, the obvious bad guy is just the typical asshole who wants money and to find the same meteor which John Greystoke was looking for which lead to his & his wife's demise...and I am not joking, he reveals his 'evil plot' not 24 hours after he arrives in the jungle with Jane & threatens her father! Oh come on, at least Disney did it so that he got them to trust him before revealing his deception! Jane's father, who for some reason switches from an American to British accent from time to time, is just annoying & doesn't even care for his own safety or his wife and daughter as he has lived in the jungle for 15 years all for the sake of the meteor! The other characters like Clayton's henchmen, Derek & the apes don't really have much on them besides being comedy reliefs or are there just to annoy you. And another thing I want to add is that the voice acting overall is just awful! The delivery makes it seem if they had no context as to what's going on in the scenes, especially with Spencer Locke and at times the delivery can be hilariously bad, including Lutz's attempts at the infamous Tarzan yell!
Story: 2/10
Animation: 3/10
Characters: 1/10
Overall: 2/10
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