Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)

Plot; After being shipwrecked off the coast of Africa, a young aristocratic couple must survive in their harsh new environment. When the wife dies and the husband is killed, their young infant son is adopted into a community of apes and raised as one of them. But when, as a young man, he is found by the survivor of a doomed British expedition and learns of his true lineage, he is forced to make a choice between the comforts of a home he's never known and the savage jungles where he was raised.Tries to rise above the pulp roots of its progenitor and the B-movie muck of its siblings in a way that often parallels that of its fish out of water title character. It's a well made film backed by strong performances and a sincere attempt to tell an interesting and dramatic (at times melodramatic) story. If the victim is fun, then so be it, but you'll forgive me if I have been conditioned to expect at least a *little* action from the Lord of the jungle.Moving at the speed of cold molasses uphill, it still managed to hold my interest for the bulk of its 2+ hour runtime.

This film is the perfect example of a film that relied a lot in the build up then turned to be a monotonous bore until its very last 15 minutes or so. Nothing really happens in this vacuum of almost one hour, and it clearly prejudiced the film. In the start, we have all the stuff about the accident of 'Tarzan's parents, and then ahead we watch Tarzan's growing up and supposedly conquering the forest?, i guess? This part in the film is carefully treated, but still does not explain, or a least i didn't get, how Tarzan becomes the king of the apes. It suddenly shows him already as the king 30 minutes after his 'growing', but it not shows how he earn that title.And anyways, the acting by the lead actor is not at all that convincing. He is either sad or raging, but it never impacts the viewer in the way it is supposed to do. I missed a bit the Tarzan, in fact.The soundtrack is indeed good, love classical music, but in this film it was misused. I say that because it don't fitted the scenes, therefore it wasn't even necessary to this film. Not saying that a film don't needs music, but if the music is not at all put in a way that it will add something to it, it is just pointless.The cinematography is good i guess, good use of lightning in the interiors scenes of the Greystoke castle. The panoramic vision of the forest was good, but it was way too quickly exposed and also too generic.In a quick resume, Greystoke is a film that loses his breath in half the way, and just recovers it when it's too late. 5.7/10

I remember this movie well, though it has been a time since I have last seen it. First as a child, then as an adult, the movie stuck with me. I don't think the average person would realize just how much this movie has to offer at a glance, so hopefully someone will read some of the reviews and know just how good it is.This Tarzan is wild and savage like a beast, yet his heart is undeniably human. Is it love that makes the man or the darker side that lies just beneath the surface of the civilized man, and not quite that deep in Tarzan? Stumbling across it on IMDb, I really have the urge to watch this movie again. Let's see if NetFlix carries it!

Edgar Rice Burrough's classic character of John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke, aka Tarzan, Lord of the Apes springs vividly to life in the most accurate celluloid rendering of the original novel "Tarzan of the Apes" (given a somewhat more unwieldy title here - the only demerit against this spectacular adaptation).Christopher Lambert (of "Subway" and "Highlander" fame) heads a cast of luminaries such as Ian Holm, and - in sadly his farewell performance - the late Sir Ralsph Richardson as Tarzan's grandfather, Earl Greystoke. With superb direction by Hugh Hudson following his Oscar-conquering "Chariots of Fire", we are swept from the bleak moors of Scotland to the primal uplands of equitorial Africa and back again as we follow Clayton/Tarzan from his birth to shipwrecked aristos, through his youth amongst the great apes and to his return to, and disillusionment with, Western civilisation. A young Andie McDowall gives her debut performance as Jane Porter (of "Me Tarzan, you Jane" fame, although that line is not uttered here, or indeed, in any Tarzan story or movie much to the amazement of many), with a vocal performance dubbed by Glenn Close.Some of the greatest performances in the movie however come from the apes themselves, or rather the performers portraying the apes. The scenes of the young Tarzan cradling his dying ape mother, and later the adult Clayton discovering his ape father caged in the back of a museum, are extraordinarily poignant. No wonder Tarzan rejects the bland, soulless and vicious humans to return to the wild life among the apes: the simian characters show more humanity than some of the people on display here.I have seen some commentators calling this film "pretentious", usually whilst championing earlier Tarzans, such as the Johnny Weissmuller efforts of the '30s and '40s. All i can say to that is, if it is pretentious to actually stay true to the original text and character, then there is something strange going on. That's like championing Adam West's Batman over Christian Bale: baffling.This is a superb movie, and certainly the best portrayal of Burrough's story and characters on screen thus far. I simply can't see it being bettered any time soon, unless someone picks up the rights and does straight adaptations of Burrough's original novels and stories. I can't see that happening somehow, so i'm more than happy to stick with this.