Watch Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes For Free

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good concept, poorly executed.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A bit of an oddity, this: a few years ago I read through the original Burroughs novel and was eager to find out how this adaptation held up. The answer is that it follows the story in the book extremely closely – especially in the first half – depicting events with a kind of vicious believability that's miles away from the chest-beating, vine-swinging Tarzans of old.It's not entirely accurate – there's far less of that grisly business involving the hostile tribesmen – but what I saw, I liked. The apes are played by men in pretty convincing suits, and watching Tarzan growing up to become lord of the jungle is a lot of fun. In addition to that, the film plays an ace in the casting of Ian Holm as the Belgian captain who 'civilises' Tarzan. Holm gives a subtle, mannered, quite excellent performance, one that's filled with emotion and is the best in the entire movie.That's not to say that Christopher Lambert, as the title character, is bad. It's a memorable debut turn, carefully judged and entirely physical. He gets the movements and mannerisms of a jungle-born man just right, which is why it's a shame that the ridiculous decision was made to rub him over with animal noises. If he's angry, a lion's roar comes out of his mouth, etc. The filmmakers rely on such things a lot, especially in the second half, and it's a real shame.That's not the only problem with the second half. Once the action shifts to England, the pacing slows right down and the film feels devoid of incident. Andie MacDowell is fairly uninteresting in playing an insipid Jane, and even a final, unexpectedly touching turn from Ralph Richardson fails to liven things up. As I remember, this part of the film deviates quite substantially from the book, and it suffers for it. Basically we get an hour of Tarzan wandering around his mansion and it's all rather depressing. It's a shame, because earlier on a great deal of effort was made to bring those jungle scenes to life, and it all fizzles out at the end.

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!

Okay - this movie starts with Tarzan's parents getting killed after experiencing a shipwreck that gets them to Africa - after apes kill his parents Tarzan gets brought up as an ape - now this is where the bad things happen - you have 1 hour or so of apes behaving typically with Tarzan, they spent too long doing this and I would rather them get to the point. Tarzan is now a fully grown man and earns his title as ruler of the apes, an expedition comes along and all but 1 die - this guy played by Ian Holm then starts to teach Tarzan how to speak English, maybe it's just me but I can't suspend my disbelief to buy that he learns English within a few months.Then Tarzan and Phillipe (the person teaching him) decide to bring him to his family. Tarzan then meets his grandfather when he's back at England, he tries to adapt from ape society to high-class society (which is obviously not an easy task) and falls in love with a woman named Jane. Soon the grandfather experiences an accidental death. This pushes Tarzan over the edge because he then has to run the estate as his grandfather did. He then finds the ape that raised him in captivity and both behave like apes then one person shoots the ape, Tarzan then (in a way) begs to go back to Africa because he can't take the responsibility of what was being presented to him and he goes back.In my opinion this movie really picks up into the good parts of the movie when dialogue occurs. It definitely took too long with the ape part it said what was needed to be said about 15 minutes into the thing. Christopher Lambert is definitely the best performance out of the whole thing. It's decent entertainment, at least.

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.