As any typical college female student, I have an addiction to a wonderful thing called Netflix. It has a variety of movies and TV shows – you have probably heard of it.
The other night I was scrolling through a bunch of movies trying to find the right one, and I decided to watch a classic Disney movie from my childhood days.
I chose to watch “Tarzan,” I hadn’t watched it in a while and I thought it would be a great movie to start off my Friday night.
While I was watching the movie I forgot how good it actually was. Of course, I am also catching all the jokes and innuendos now that I am old enough to understand them, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s a good childhood flick.
The way Kala took in Tarzan as her own child when clearly he was different from her and when the family of gorillas raised him as one of their own, demonstrated acceptance perfectly in my opinion. This is a trait children should be learning at a young age, and this movie did a good job at doing so.
It is amazing how integrated the family becomes; even an elephant can be seen as a member of the family in my opinion – based on the amount of time Tantor spends with Tarzan’s “cousin” Terk.
Like every Disney movie though, there were a couple tear-jerking moments. One was right at the beginning when Tarzan’s parents are killed by the jaguar – the same jaguar that killed Kala and Kerchak’s baby.
The other tear-jerking moment was when Kerchak died and Tarzan became the leader of the family – spoiler alert. But, Kerchak never saw Tarzan as his son, though, because he was different – which goes against the acceptance quality of the movie – but Kerchak’s last words were “take care of the family, son.”
So, Tarzan finally gets accepted by someone he has idolized his whole life but then loses him. Disney loves to make its movies sad – I really don’t understand that.
To top it all off, the songs get stuck in your head and they are so sad but so perfect.
“Tarzan” is a wonderful movie for children and I guess for the young adults who don’t want to grow up, like myself. I could watch a Disney movie any day, even though they can be sad sometimes – well, most of the time actually.
BECKY HILKER
