BEFORE: Frank Welker carries over from "Tarzan II", at least I think he does. Once again, no mention of him in the IMDB, but Wikipedia says he provides the voice (vocal effects?) for two characters, Nuru and Sheeta. Or else they just used his tiger growls from the first "Tarzan" film for new leopard characters, but to me, that's going to serve my purposes, because I planned to put the two direct-to-video "Tarzan" sequels together, and that's the way it's going to be.
I've got to keep moving, I can't shut down my blog just because of a little linking dispute - either Frank Welker's voice is in these "Tarzan" sequels, or it isn't. If it is, the chain is still good and I'm still on track for another perfect year. If it isn't, well, at least the pressure's off. Similarly, some small parts of Disney's Orlando operations are going to open this week (thank God we didn't stick to our plan to go to Florida in the first week of May) and the shops and restaurants at Disney World are going to open in about a week. The theme park itself is still closed, but at this point it's probably just a matter of time, they'll have signs up that the management is not responsible for any Covid-19 transmission (but hey, neither is our government, apparently) and then maybe by next spring this whole thing will have blown over, and if people still don't want to visit Epcot or Galaxy's Edge, well, that will just make it easier for me to get in.
Meanwhile, we've got some restaurants opening up here in NYC - I saw signs last week that Starbucks stores would open today, and over the weekend I stood in line at Carvel for some ice cream, but the line moved much too slowly and I decided it wasn't worth it. I think it will be a while before the service industry gets its act together and starts providing, you know, service. But I think I'll go for a walk today to get some more cold cuts from the pork store, just to have something to do.
THE PLOT: After being married an entire year, Jane thinks back on some of her and Tarzan's adventures as she searches for something special to mark the occasion with.
AFTER: Well, now I feel like I was tricked into watching this. While this was technically the first direct-to-video sequel to Disney's "Tarzan" (released three years before "Tarzan II") it's really just three (unaired) episodes of the Disney Channel show "The Legend of Tarzan", stitched together in order to make a home-video release out of them. Shameless. What an obvious cash-grab, but I guess Disney did what they had to do in order to keep the franchise alive until a proper sequel could be produced. Still, this is no way to treat fans of the original 1999 movie.
They even use that horrible sit-com format from the 1970's that came around at the close of a season, when the writers had nothing left in the tank, or some star was in rehab and unavailable, where a few of the characters would sit around and say, "Hey, remember that time we got locked in that meat locker at the butcher shop?" "Oh, yeah, that was terrible..." and then they'd run a few scenes from that previous episode, and repeat until a half-hour show is full. Worse yet, they'd promote it as an "All-New" episode, which it obviously wasn't, just the framing device was new and the rest was old. I mean, come on, call it a "New" episode, I can let that slide because it's a new edit of previously aired material, but "ALL-NEW"? Someone felt they needed to invent a word that was an even greater lie to hide to disguise their duplicity and trick viewers into tuning in.
I can also see why these three episodes didn't make the cut - in the first one, Jane's friends come to visit her in the jungle, and all three prudish women are CLEARLY attracted to muscle-bound Tarzan, who swings around wearing just a loincloth that barely covers what needs to be covered. The three women wondered why their friend would stay in the jungle and not come back to England, but by the end of their visit, they all understand the appeal of jungle life. Gee, umm, Jane, your husband Tarzan, does he have a brother, maybe a cousin? We know he swings on a vine, but does he, you know, SWING?
In the second episode (to explain why Jane shouldn't get Tarzan an anniversary gift), they flashback to Tarzan being hired as a guide to help two men get across the jungle. They claim to there to study the volcano, but they're really there to get some diamonds from the mine that's WAY too close to said volcano. (I bet if I Googled whether any diamond mines in the world are near active volcanoes, the answer would be a resounding no...).
And in the third flashback episode, a couple of World War I biplane pilots crash near Tarzan and Jane's tree-story treehouse, and one just happens to be an old childhood friend of Jane's, there to collect a music box that he gave her years ago, which somehow has something to do with secret codes. Tarzan doesn't like this guy from the start, and he turns out to be a double-agent, so there's a great lesson for the kids, first impressions are usually correct, so always judge a book by its cover.
The third flashback is supposed to prove why Jane shouldn't expect Tarzan to dance with her on their anniversary, but I'm not sure anyone dances in that whole story, especially not Tarzan, so I fail to see how that story even illustrates the point it was supposed to be making.
Along the way, Tarzan battles panthers, surfs on a crocodile, and rides a slab of rock down a volcano's lava flow, among other extreme sports, but I still feel that I tried very hard to re-work this film into my schedule after skipping it in January, but in the end I probably shouldn't have bothered. The animation is very crude in some parts, nearly threadbare line-drawing, not all that beautiful shading that we saw during the tree-surfing scenes in the original film. Plus the sound-mixing in the third episode was WAY off, the music was much too loud and I could barely hear the voices. Why not fix that before posting this film on your wonderful new Disney Plus streaming service?
Also starring the voices of Michael T. Weiss, Olivia d'Abo (last heard in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Jeff Bennett, Jim Cummings (last heard in "Christopher Robin"), April Winchell (also carrying over from "Tarzan II", just in case), Rene Auberjonois (last seen in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"), Grey DeLisle-Griffin, Alexis Denisof (last heard in "All-Star Superman"), John O'Hurley, Nicollette Sheridan (last seen in "Code Name: the Cleaner"), Tara Strong (last heard in "Teen Titans GO! to the Movies"), Kevin Michael Richardson (also last heard in "All-Star Superman").
RATING: 2 out of 10 cricket scores
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