Tarzan & Jane (G)
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This is a direct-to-video sequel to Disney's Tarzan. It came out in 2002, but I didn't see it until 2016. It's Jane and Tarzan's first anniversary, and Jane wants to do something special for the occasion, to surprise her husband. However, when she tells this to Terk and Tantor (and later her father), each of them has a story about "the last time that happened," to discourage her from her various ideas. Apparently, each story was an unaired episode of the TV series The Legend of Tarzan (so of course, the voice actors for the main characters were the ones from the series, rather than the original movie). I think it's safe to say that creating a framework to tie together these unrelated stories was obviously a bit of a challenge, and I dare say it's up to the viewer to decide how well it worked. Personally, I thought it was okay, but not great. The end was maybe a bit better than the general conceit, but still... meh. However, I don't think the movie should be judged so much on the forced framework as on the individual stories, and they weren't so bad. The animation, of course, wasn't as good as in the original movie. (It was much simpler, and kind of looked to me like Flash, though I don't think it was. And I don't remember the TV series looking this simple. But whatevs.)

Anyway, the first story is about three friends of Jane's (Greenly, Hazel, and Eleanor) coming to visit her in the jungle. Actually, they came to "rescue" her, since they didn't believe she really chose to stay in Africa instead of returning to England. So, Jane does her best to convince them, which involves going on a picnic. Unfortunately, they end up being attacked by a pair of panthers, whom they have to evade until Tarzan can show up and rescue them. (He hadn't attended the picnic, because he was upset about the idea that Jane wanted him to act more civilized than he usually does. But there is a nice moment where Professor Porter reminds him that Jane lives every day in his world, so it's not asking too much for him to spend one day behaving as if he lived in hers.) The story was decent, I guess, but I think what I liked best about it was that Greenly was voiced by Grey DeLisle. (The other two were voiced by Tara Strong and Nicollette Sheridan, though I didn't recognize their voices while watching the movie.)

The second story was about a couple of guys named Niels (John O'Hurley) and Merkus (Jim Cummings), who at first claimed to be vulcanologists, but were actually searching for diamonds that they somehow knew would be inside a volcano in Tarzan's jungle. So they get Tarzan to guide them to the volcano, after he's recommended by a guy named Dumont (Rene Auberjonois), a recurring character on the TV series who I didn't remember. The diamond hunters convinced Tarzan to help them by telling him about how women liked to wear diamond rings, so he wanted to get a diamond for Jane. Of course, they ultimately betray him, and our heroes have to escape from the erupting volcano in a way that was cool, but ridiculously unbelievable. (Seriously, there is no way Tarzan, Jane, and the Professor didn't get touched by lava a bunch of times, but somehow they never got burned.)

The third story involves a childhood friend of Jane's named Robert Canler (Jeff Bennett), who is now a pilot in the British Royal Air Force, showing up in the jungle to visit Jane. But first, he shoots down another British pilot named Nigel Taylor (Alexis Denisof). But Tarzan and Jane know nothing about that, and when they first meet Bobby, Jane is delighted to see him, but Tarzan doesn't trust him. Terk thinks Tarzan is just being jealous, but... well, I don't want to spoil how that all turns out.

Anyway... I enjoyed the movie well enough. And Professor Porter was pretty funny, throughout the whole thing (even if he was a relatively minor character in all the stories). So I'm glad to have seen it, even if I can understand how some people might find it disappointing.