Disney’s ‘The Jungle Book’ and ‘Aristocats’ App Review

Disney has always been a home for great stories. Every decade since the 1930s, when Disney’s first feature animation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, debuted, has seen its share of classic films, including 1967’s The Jungle Book and 1970’s Aristocats. Today our kids have grown up on DVD and Blu-ray copies of these films, but now they can also marvel at the same stories told in a new way – interactive e-books on the iPad and iPhone.

Plot

Both books follow the storyline of the movies quite well. They cut the parts that are a bit superfluous, but keep in the important plot points so that the story continues to make sense. If your kids are fans of the movies, they’ll have no problem following along with the e-books.

The Look

Both books feature an art style very similar to water color; however it is perhaps better conveyed in The Jungle Book. There are scenes from this book that are screen capture-worthy, whereas I can really only think of one scene in Aristocats that would earn the same honor. That’s not to say the art in Aristocats is bad, it’s just that it’s a very different movie set in more pedestrian locales (even if they are as exotic as Paris).

The animation in both books is essentially still “paintings” with a few key parts that move; it’s a little like watching a Monty Python cartoon. It’s an efficient and attractive way to animate an e-book and not at all uncommon. That being said, the artwork works in favor of the animation in Jungle Book, helping to hide some of the seams when parts of a character move. On occasion in Aristocats you can easily see where a character is going to move and it feels a little cheapened by that clue. The animation in Jungle Book is also a bit more interesting and complex than in Aristocats. For example, there’s a scene where the python Kaa is trying to hypnotize the panther Bhageera, and Mowgli kicks Kaa’s coiled body off a branch, sending him crashing to the ground. Rather than just a simple “back-and-forth”, repetitive movement, the scene plays out with a lot of frames to really show Mowgli’s actions; it’s pretty impressive.

My only complaint with The Jungle Book is the continual use of “close-up, zoom out”. In the example below you see Baloo on the left side, which is how this “page” starts. But for the second paragraph, it zooms out to reveal the picture on the right, letting us know that Mowgli is also in the scene. This directorial choice can get a little repetitive after a while. Not every page uses this technique – there are times when the animation will move side-to-side or up-and-down – but a little more variation would have been appreciated. Luckily that’s not really an issue in Aristocats, which does a much better job of mixing things up.

Interactivity

Oddly enough, though they’re made by the same production company for Disney, the two books feature slightly different navigation schemes. Aristocats uses two large arrows in the top corners of the screen to indicate turning the page forward or backward or to advance to the next paragraph. It’s a simple scheme that kids can pick up pretty easily, though you have to wait for the text to completely load before you can move forward; you can’t skip a section easily without essentially watching it through.

The Jungle Book also has page arrows in the top corners, but it also has smaller arrows to advance through the paragraphs. This way if there’s a page that frightens your child, you can skip the whole page by tapping one of the top arrows without having to sit through the entire animation and text. I know that seems weird considering its an e-book and the whole point is to read it, but if you have a child that’s afraid of snakes or is spooked by the exaggerated lines of King Louie, for example, this is a quick, convenient way to skip those sections. Oddly enough, for me anyway, it feels like a more intuitive way to go through the book. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but it works better for me.

The Fun Stuff

It’s pretty common for e-books to come with a few little games that kids can play. Both Jungle Book and Aristocats include coloring pages and puzzles, which are pretty standard features. One thing to note about the coloring pages, though, is that they are fairly detailed drawings, which can be difficult to color accurately, even on an iPad (unless you have a stylus, of course). So if your kid is OCD about staying in the lines, they’re probably not going to like coloring too much. My daughter couldn’t care less about staying in the lines, so she rather enjoys coloring in either book. There are a few surprise games that are worth mentioning, though.

The Jungle Book features a shell game where kids have to follow the coconut halves with a character picture underneath, and it’s pretty fun. There is also a set of bongos that kids can play, and a sing-a-long video of Baloo doing his classic tune, “The Bear Necessities”.

The Aristocats‘ killer feature is a small set of piano keys – nine ivories and five ebonies – with three modes of play. Listen mode is simply Berlioz playing his feature song from the film, “Scales and Arpeggios”; Learn mode has a little paw that shows what notes to hit to play Berlioz’s tune; and Play mode opens up the piano so kids can pound away on their own. My only complaint is that the Learn function moves automatically from note to note way too fast for any kid other than a young Mozart to pick up the tune. It would have been much better had the paw not moved to the next note until the player hit the note, so they could learn at their own pace. Still, the Play mode alone makes it a worthy extra feature.

Both books also feature a record function, so the narration can be played back in your voice. This is a nice feature if your spouse is frequently away on business trips or even in the military, so that Mommy or Daddy can still read Junior a bedtime story even when they’re not there.

The only thing I wish these books had was more surprises. It’s not uncommon anymore for an e-book to have little Easter Eggs that kids can find as they revisit the book. It would have been great if a treetop in the Jungle Book shook and a monkey popped out when the reader tapped it, or tap the train in the Aristocats and the whistle blew. Just little things like that would have not only added a lot of fun to the adventure, but would have given the apps additional replay value.

Conclusion

Although there are a few things Disney could do better with these apps, they’re still worth the low price of $3.99 in iTunes. The classic stories alone would be worth that price, but throw in the games, and surprises like the drums and piano, and your little ones will be happy.