On the vine

Tarzan goes easy on the music

Tarzan is the first Disney animation I can recall that's not really a musical. It's got music, of course, and five songs by Phil Collins, but with the exception of Kala's lullaby "You'll Be in My Heart" (Glenn Close does the first verse, very nicely, before Collins takes over) and some bopping by Terk (Rosie O'Donnell) in "Trashin' the Camp," the characters don't sing -- Collins provides background vocals, just as in a regular movie. The tunes are poppy but generic, with, no surprise, Afro-Celtic rhythms; the most kinetic is the backbeat-heavy "Son of Man." The lyrics fall into the "I gotta be me but who am I" mode of The Lion King and Hercules and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mulan -- sample from "Strangers like Me": "Oh I just know there's something/Bigger out there." Alternate versions are included: Collins does his own "You'll Be in My Heart," then teams up with the obligatory hot guest -- this time it's 'N Sync -- for "Trashin' the Camp." Black musicians are conspicuous by their absence.

If you want to go back to where it all started, be warned that Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes is a bit of a potboiler, with a complicated, messy plot (Jane actually has two other suitors, and Tarzan follows her to Baltimore and, yes, Wisconsin) and some purple prose: "Jane -- her lithe, young form flattened against the trunk of a great tree, her hands tight pressed against her rising and falling bosom, and her eyes wide with mingled horror, fascination, fear, and admiration -- watched the primordial ape battle with the primeval man for possession of a woman -- for her." Then there's the cliffhanger ending. Burroughs was no fool: if you want to know whether Tarzan marries Jane, you'll have to ante up for The Return of Tarzan.

Or you could save time and watch the 1932 movie. Johnny Weissmuller scarcely speaks in Tarzan the Ape Man, but Maureen O'Sullivan talks enough for two, bantering on as if she had Clark Gable in front of her. The sensibility is vaguely Burroughsian; the story -- Jane's father wants to find the elephant graveyard -- isn't. The romance is just heating up at the end, so be prepared to head back to the video store for Tarzan and His Mate.

Tarzan comics go back almost as far as Tarzan novels, offering in the early '30s episodes like "Tarzan's First Christmas" and "Tarzan Goes Fox Hunting." The older comics are collectors' items; contemporary versions have Tarzan dropping in on, say, the Phantom of the Opera. Instead, try Darkhorse's reissue of Russ Manning's '60s comic: Tarzan looks like Mr. America and Jane like Miss Universe, but the gorillas are realistic, the artwork is exquisite, the compacted adaptation is reasonably faithful, and Tarzan's ape language -- "Kreegah! Tarzan bundolo!" -- still sends shivers down the spine.
-- J.G.

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