Tarzan Review

This Disney animation film is, believe it or not, the 48th screen version of the Tarzan story (only the character of Dracula has featured more often in movies). The familiar tale is told briskly and entertainingly; baby Tarzan is left alone when his shipwrecked parents are consumed by a particularly nasty leopard; he`s taken in by a family of apes and grows to manhood spending his time leaping through the trees as if he were skateboarding. Enter Jane, her father and the nasty white hunter, Clayton, who wants to round up animals for a zoo...I`ve always been a sucker for Disney animation - not surprising, I suppose, because, like most of us I was cinematically weaned on Snow White and Bambi. I know Disney inevitably takes a superficial approach to the material; but when the animation is as rich and 3-dimensional as it is here I really don`t care. Tarzan, voiced by Tony Goldwyn, is an all-American outdoor boy; Jane, Minnie Driver, is Terribly English and prim - but when Tarzan investigates her legs she packs a hefty kick; her dad, Nigel Hawthorne, is a typical silly ass, and Brian Blessed`s nasty white hunter competes with the leopard for chief villain - yes, the film has a powerful anti-gun, anti-hunting message. Parents and grandparents should have almost as much fun as the ankle-biters.