THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (2016) * ½

The Legend of Tarzan takes an inordinate amount of time getting going.  We start off with a laborious scene setting up Christoph Waltz’s villainy, turgid sequences of Samuel L. Jackson trying to convince Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgard) to return to Africa, and Tarzan’s flashbacks to his childhood growing up in the jungle.  By the time the adult Tarzan finally returns home with his wife Jane (Margot Robbie) in tow, I was already nodding off.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t improve much from there.

Part of the problem is Skarsgard makes for a dull Tarzan.  While he certainly looks the part with his scraggily hair and chiseled physique, he acts much too civilized to really sell the character.  Even when he starts swinging from vines and shit, you never once believe it. 

 Robbie, who you would think is ideally cast as Jane, is shrill.  Like Skarsgard, she looks great in the role, but comes up way short.  Waltz is stuck playing his umpteenth twist on his stock villain role and Djmon Honsou is, of course, around to play yet another villain.  Jackson is the only spark of life, although he just seems shoehorned in there to give Tarzan a sidekick that modern-day audiences can relate to.  

Another problem is that the filmmakers try to make Tarzan a reluctant hero.  They spend a lot of time having Tarzan hemming and hawing about coming back to Africa.  It would’ve worked better had Tarzan been more assertive.  As it is, it takes him a good hour or so before he starts doing his thing, which is far too long if you ask me.

Another issue is that director David Yates (the director of the last 47 Harry Wizard movies) should’ve just assumed everyone knows the story of Tarzan and Jane.  The flashback scenes are incongruous to the action and are totally superfluous.  The scene of Tarzan and Jane’s first meeting (complete with bad de-aging CGI) falls flat.  At one point, Waltz forgoes getting into a big speech and simply says, “He’s Tarzan, you’re Jane.  He’ll come for you.”  The rest of the movie should’ve taken its cue from this bit of dialogue and just trusted the audience to know who the fuck Tarzan and Jane are.

Also, the ape CGI is pretty bad.  They don’t look terrible when they’re standing still, but once they get moving, it looks quite phony.  The big scene where Tarzan swings from his trusty vine suffers from terrible FX too.  I mean they can make Spider-Man swinging through the air look great with no problem.  How come when Tarzan does it, it looks so shitty?  It’s bad enough we have to wait nearly an hour before he swings on the vine to begin with, and even then, the CGI is so shitty it looks like something out of Pitfall.  

Like the main character, the movie spends too much time being civilized.  Once it finally loosens up a little, all we get is a few generic fight scenes that use way too much slow motion.  The humor (like when Skarsgard and Jackson joke about licking monkey nuts) feels out of place, but at least it’s memorable, unlike everything else in this bland, boring mess.

Remember as a kid when all those old Johnny Weissmuller movies used to be on TV non-stop and you could kill a lazy afternoon watching them?  I can’t imagine anyone doing that with this version.  Heck, even the Disney version is head and shoulders better than this tripe.  

AKA:  Tarzan.  AKA:  Tarzan:  Reborn.