Tarzan & Jane (2002)

Tarzan & Jane is a clumsy, badly animated, unimaginative, cheap, embarrassing sequel to the 1999 Disney film. It may say “An All-New Movie!” but this is clearly 3 episodes of a TV show stitched together and bookended by a wraparound story in an attempt to recuperate some of the funds spent creating them.

The Wraparound story Tarzan and Jane have been married and living together in the jungle for a year now. Jane (now voiced by Olivia d'Abo) is wondering how to celebrate with her husband. Each of her ideas prompt Tantor (Jim Cummings), her father (Jeff Bennet) or Terk (April Winchell) to remind her of a past adventure.

Tarzan and the British Invasion When three of Jane’s friends come to visit, she tries to prove to them that her new home can be fun. Tarzan worries his wife is embarrassed by him while two hungry panthers start planning a jungle feast.

Out of the dusty library of obligatory plots comes this story. Bad jokes. Predictable plot. The animation varies in terms of quality. If there's a highlight, it's a scene in which Jane and her friends take refuge inside a log. It changes shape and size more than Megatron did in the original Transformers cartoon. By being completely forgettable, its the worst of the stories we get. In other ways, it’s the best - it's not awful enough to haunt you after it's done.

Tarzan and the Volcanic Diamond Mine When two diamond hunters ask Tarzan to guide them to a nearby volcano, he accepts. While there, he will get Jane a diamond as a gift. Unfortunately for him, the evil diamond hunters are evil.

This story is a lot more fun to discuss because it’s absolutely ludicrous. So these two guys come to Africa looking for diamonds. I’ll believe it. When Tarzan offers to lead them to the volcano that is literally filled with thousands of diamonds, they immediately think of how they are going to stab him in the back once he is facing the other way... even though he saves them both from a river full of crocodiles. These must be the greediest, most short-sighted treasure hunters ever. The King of the Apes lives in the jungle and owns nothing. They really can’t leave even a single diamond behind? Even if you absolutely had to backstab him, at least do it when you’re within sight of the camp where you can make your escape; not in the middle of nowhere where you're still surrounded by hungry beasts and run the risk of getting lost forever. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that there's some surfing going on in this story, and it is not on water or tree branches.

Tarzan and the Flying Ace An old friend of Jane’s comes to the jungle to say hello. Robert Canler (Jeff Bennett), a pilot for the British Air Force, makes Tarzan jealous. But is he simply frightened that his wife will cheat on him with a refined gentleman, or is there something genuinely sinister about the pilot?

This story plays like a bad rom-com. No one communicates and wild assumptions are made for the sake of the plot. The story is contrived and once again, the villains in this would-be series have little foresight. They always forget that by meeting up with Tarzan and Jane, it means that they are in AFRICA. Even by plane, it would take ages to go there and return. The best part of this story is a scene where a downed pilot fires “warning shots” at some hungry panthers. Who fires warning shots at carnivorous wild cats? It makes no sense. If the guy really wanted to live, he would have killed at least one of those predators.

Overall, Tarzan & Jane is horrible. The animation is bad. Even for television, the characters change quite a bit from episode to episode. Their movements and actions look odd. You can tell none of the film's talents had anything to do with these stories. The voice acting is painfully bad and the writing awful. All three tales feel like they were taken from the bin of “ideas for when you have no ideas for your children’s TV show”. Plots make no sense, characters' actions make no sense. I doubt anyone even googled the words "diamond", "volcano", "Africa" or even “Tarzan” before production started. I got through it because I was able to calculate that there were probably only going to be three stories and that every twenty minutes it was going to change drastically. Breaking down the pain into chunks makes it bearable - though the one bad song feature doesn't make it easy. I haven’t seen many of the Direct-to-Video Disney sequels, but I'm certain they can't get much worse. I can’t recommend this film but I didn’t absolutely hate it. This is merely a titanic disappointment instead of a disgusting cash grab. (On VHS, May 23, 2015)

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