Movie review - "Jungle Book" (1942) ***

It can't have been easy coming up with star vehicles for Sabu so Alex Korda returned once again to Rudyard Kipling. It's an inevitably episodic version of the famous short stories, with the British very much in the background and the focus on Mowglai and his animal friends, with the baddies being some villagers convinced the young boy is no good. Some of the effects and animal stuff still works well, some is hokey. The musical score is beautiful, an absolute masterpiece, and the final fire is effective. But it feels very unsatisfactory that we don't know what happened to Sabu and his girlfriend, especially as there was no sequel.