Tarzan review

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TARZAN

If there's a rod Disney have made for their own back, it's that continued success sees the benchmark of achievement notched ever higher - and a back catalogue bristling with acknowledged classics makes each and every feature a colossal challenge.

Little wonder then, that as the output has increased over the 80s and 90s, a couple of movies have not really been up to par. But it's worth remembering that this is Disney's par, and it's a fairly exceptional standard at that.

Happily, this latest offering from the House of Mouse need not concern itself with such quality qualifications: this is top stuff in anyone's book - even theirs.

Finally getting round to the real king of the swingers, it's a cross (storywise) between the dour, serious Greystoke version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic and the one where Bo Derek's clothes keep falling off, all rendered in a Pocahontas animation stylee.

This beautifully painted, family-friendly, half-term adventure has Tony Goldwyn (Patrick Swayze's villainous best friend in Ghost) as the sensitive, abandoned ape-man, orphaned in a rather harrowing example of the fittest surviving principle.

He's saved from his own, personal extinction by Kala (Glenn Close), who becomes Tarzan's surrogate gorilla Ma, much to the disapproval and annoyance of silverback patriarch Kerchak (Lance Henriksen).

Over time, however, Tarzan is accepted within the gorilla family, coming under its protection and eventually - as he grows into a lithe, animal-like adult - helping to defend it.

And then the so-called civilised world comes knocking in the bumbling form of Professor Porter (Nigel Hawthorne), his spirited daughter Jane (Minnie Driver) and their blunt guide and guardian Clayton (Brian Blessed), a larger-than-life hunter with sinister designs in mind.

Employing their latest innovation (dubbed rather dramatically "deep canvas"), Disney's singular triumph here has been to make the jungle backdrop almost a character in its own right.

Not talking trees or anything as crass as that, more a living, enveloping world in harmony with the gorillas and especially Tarzan, who glides through some superbly kinetic scenes aping surf and skateboard manoeuvres as well as the common or garden vine-swinging variety.