Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)
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Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes Movie Review
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes is a 1984 adventure film directed by Hugh Hudson and starring Christopher Lambert and Ian Holm. It’s a flawed, but solid movie.
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“This is not the world, John.
Just the edge of it“
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First and foremost, this film is not my favorite Tarzan movie, not by a long run. But it’s still far from bad either. It’s a solid flick which is genuinely excellent when it comes to some of its aspects, but it simply lacked genuine fun and excitement leading to an adventure movie failure. It is overly serious and it’s too consumed with the city part of the story with the jungle scenes being underutilized.
But still, as a historical picture, it works so well. That’s because the script is quite good, the dialogue is actually excellent and the movie even managed to capture some great moments from the book such as the relationship between Tarzan and d’Arnot. I actually loved the beginning and ending plus some of the society scenes are very strong, but most of the jungle sequences are overly serious and rather forgettable.
Christopher Lambert is fine as Tarzan, but him being called John instead of Tarzan was ridiculous. Ralph Richardson’s role is overrated as it’s rather small, but I really liked Andie MacDowell as Jane. The standout of course is Ian Holm who excelled at portraying one of the most purely likable characters from the original novel.
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Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan is a technically polished movie. I loved the cinematography, the dialogue is, as I have already said, terrific and grounded in reality and the movie managed to capture its setting and especially time period so well. The characterization is mostly solid as is the acting too. I also have to commend the score and sound effects, but I found Hugh Hudson’s direction subpar per usual and the movie’s high realism is at times impressive while it also hurt it in the long run as it led to a very unadventurous and frequently even dull cinematic experience.
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes is a solid, but very problematic adaptation which benefits from quite strong technical aspects, very memorable and likable Ian Holm, a great beginning and ending plus it works so well as a historical picture, but it entirely failed as an adventure flick owing to its excessive realism, dull and underutilized jungle scenes and an overwhelming lack of sense of fun.
