Jungle Book 2

Snug in his human village, young Mowgli (voice by Haley Joel Osment) misses Baloo the bear (John Goodman) and his other jungle pals. Meanwhile, the tiger Shere Kahn seethes with resentment toward the pipsqueak “man cub” who humiliated him. This slickly animated sequel is pointless for two reasons—because the story goes nowhere and because there was no reason (besides crass commercialism) to make it in the first place. Movies like this are probably the result of home video: Now that every family owns the 1967 original, there’s no money in reissuing it every seven years the way Disney used to do with its classics. Instead, we get a bogus sequel that plays more like a half-hearted remake—so paltry in the creative department that it even resorts to recycling the best songs from 1967.