The Jungle Book (2016 film) success, grossing over $966 million, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2016 and the 40th-highest-grossing film of all time, and was praised for its visual effects, musical score, direction, faithfulness to the original animated film, and vocal performances, particularly those of Murray, Kingsley, and Elba. At the 89th Academy Awards, the film won the award for Best Visual Effects. Mowgli is a "man cub" raised by the wolf Raksha and her pack, led by Akela, in an Indian jungle ever since he was brought to them as a baby by the black panther Bagheera. Bagheera trains Mowgli to learn the
The Jungle Book do, through the character of Mowgli himself; through his "kindly mentors", Bagheera and Baloo; through the repeated failure of the "bully" Shere Khan; through the endless but useless talk of the Bandar-log; and through the law, which makes the jungle "an integrated whole" while enabling Mowgli's brothers to live as the "Free People". The academic Jan Montefiore commented on the book's balance of law and freedom that "You don't need to invoke Jacqueline Rose on the adult's dream of the child's innocence or Perry Nodelman's theory of children's literature colonising its readers' minds with a double fantasy of the child