RE: My Personal Thoughts on "The Jungle Book (2015)"
Well I have a special memory regarding this one, as it was the first movie I went to see with my current girlfriend. It was quite funny, since she's sort of an animal nerd and she kept repeating that some of the animals were not supposed to be there, much to my amusement.
Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance of seeing the undubbed version of this movie. I avoid dubbed movies, even if translating scripts is supposed to be my job, I still can't stand not hearing from the actors themselves. Plus, Idris Elba and Giancarlo Esposito are among my favorites, so I'd really like to re-watch this one with the original voices.
At any rate, I was expecting a replica of the cartoon (much like they did with Beauty and The Beast - stuff that you have to endure when you have a girlfriend), and I was somewhat surprised at the end result, too. I agree with you that the visuals were impressive, stunning. But honestly I appreciated that they tried to give the story a different angle, rather than just trying to make money out of the audience's nostalgia.
Wow! I didn't know there was an undubbed edition? What was dubbed though? You've got me intrigued since I assumed the voice actors got overlaid onto the animal CGI models. But anyhow, yes, it was visually magnificent and not just a simple "cash grab". Favreau is already set to direct the sequel given the enormous success of the first. Can't wait for the end results...
(p.s. love the anecdote about your girlfriend, lol.)
I live in Italy, so most of the people here watch movies that are dubbed in Italian by Italian actors, rather than do as (almost) any other civilized country and watch the original version with subtitles. This means that only a handful of cinemas in the major cities will play the original version of movies, and usually only big productions (Star Wars, Marvel movies...). It is true that our dubbers are pretty good (I could say a lot about translations, but I won't), but watching a movie with someone else's voice over the original actor is in no way close to the original experience. So there's part of the population that agrees with me on this, and the other part who thinks we're snobbish and just want to brag about our English skills, or simply won't start watching subtitled movies, since they've been watching them this way since they were kids. As it often happens in this age, it's very difficult to find common grounds in any discussion, as pretty much every question is reduced to you're stupid - you're a hater.
I'm sorry I didn't explain this in the first place, it was an oversight on my part.