The Legend of Tarzan®

Adapted from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan stories, The Legend of Tarzan® (the registered trademark is inexplicably included in the onscreen credit) follows Alexander Skarsgård’s John Clayton, who spent his childhood and adolescence growing up among the apes of Africa, as he’s convinced to return to the jungle as a trade emissary and is inevitably forced to return to his more savage persona after a corrupt official (Christoph Waltz’s Leon Rom) kidnaps his beloved Jane (Margot Robbie). It’s immediately apparent that the biggest hindrance to The Legend of Tarzan®‘s success is director David Yates, as the filmmaker, working from Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer’s screenplay, takes an incongruously solemn approach to the material that remains a distraction from almost start to finish – with the hazy, slick visuals compounded by a disastrous overuse of computer-generated special effects (eg large swaths of the proceedings possess all the reality of a video game cutscene). The arms-length atmosphere is, at the very least, generally allayed by Skarsgård’s stirring turn as the title character, as the actor, bulked up to an extreme extent, manages to portray the legendary figure’s raw physicality without sacrificing his humanity. (Samuel L. Jackson, cast as an American adventurer, brings a good amount of levity to the proceedings, although Waltz, unfortunately, delivers a now-typically one-note performance as the moustache-twirling villain.) There reaches a point at which The Legend of Tarzan® seems to be morphing into the fun, fast-paced adventure movie one might’ve anticipated, with the midsection boasting a small handful of genuinely exciting sequences and interludes (eg Clayton single-handedly takes down a train-car full of soldiers) – and yet the momentum-building vibe comes to an abrupt end as the film enters its somewhat tedious third act. It’s ultimately difficult to label The Legend of Tarzan® as anything more than an ambitious failure, as the movie, for the most part, is saddled with a hopelessly inconsistent and thoroughly erratic feel that grows more and more problematic as time slowly progresses.

** out of ****