Word: tarzan
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Directors Kevin Lima and Chris Buck, writers Tab Murphy, Bob Tzudiker and Noni White and the myriad artists at their command have taken the familiar Tarzan iconography--vine swinging, Jane, Cheetah, the jungle yodel--then freshened or deepened it. This ape-man (animated by Glen Keane and voiced by Tony Goldwyn) is no longer a swinger; he rides the twisting highways of tree boughs like the coolest surfer. (Alert, all Disney park ride designers: have the Tarzan Twist ready by next spring...
Jane is still the proper young Englishwoman abroad, but she and Tarzan are naifs in each other's worlds, with resources of strength and feelings still to discover. And with Minnie Driver adroitly mining each nuance of social primness, Jane is the first Disney cartoon heroine to provide her own comic relief...
...parenting, about the pain and triumph of racial or social assimilation. Kala is a loving adoptive mother, her concern for the boy complicated by the loss of her own child and the knowledge that his difference, when he finally does understand it, may force him from her. To Kerchak, Tarzan is a threat: a wiser form of machismo. And to the brash young Terk (Rosie O'Donnell), Tarzan is just another playmate--weird...
...Tarzan yell might seem the most superficial accessory, but the filmmakers see it as a key to the drama. They never let us forget that the lad is isolated, unaware of his origin and his destiny--and aware that he is unaware. He places his palm against Kala's paw (hands are a major motif in the film) and knows that his mother is different; or, rather, she is the norm, and he the outsider. Africa is his metaphor: the lost continent is his identity. Always he asks, Who or what am I? Where do I belong...
...Tarzan is determined to "be the best ape ever." Frustrated that he can't growl exactly like his ape friends, he is advised by Kala to "just come up with your own sound." He does, and he likes it. The Tarzan yell is a shout of young maturity, of his interspecies uniqueness. But later, when he falls in love with Jane yet feels obliged to stay with his ape family to protect them, the yell carries a wrenching pathos. It is the primal scream of someone who doesn't know if he's man or monkey...