Alexander Skarsgard drained a lot of victims dry as a sexy vampire on HBO, but none of them was as bloodless as “The Legend of Tarzan.” The latest spin on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ story of the man raised by apes is a plodding, incoherent mess starring Skarsgard and his abs, which look more real than any of his CGI jungle companions.
Director David Yates (“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”) plunks us down with the adult Tarzan in the late 1800s, after he’s returned to civilization as the nobleman John Clayton. He’s married to his love, Jane (an underused Margot Robbie), but slightly unfulfilled; you can tell because everything in England is shot in a sad blue light.
Arriving rather unfortunately on the heels of “Free State of Jones,” this “Tarzan” is yet another white-savior story, in which Clayton ventures back to his African homeland to save Congolese tribes from enslavement by diamond-mining Belgians. The nasty Belgians are headed by Christoph Waltz, in familiar mild-mannered menace mode; his statesman Leon Rom makes a dirty deal with a tribal chief (Djimon Hounsou), who’s got a vendetta against Tarzan.
There’s a very boring discussion with harrumphing British politicians about why Clayton should accept an invitation to the Congo, and for some reason Samuel L. Jackson’s American envoy George Washington Williams is there to accompany him, and through all of it, you’re just waiting for Skarsgard to shed the fancy suit and become Tarzan, already.
Once he does, the film briefly hits its stride. Skarsgard gets to show off a playful, graceful physicality as he and Jackson’s character careen through the jungle, running into various animal friends and adversaries (Skarsgard nuzzling a lion will be an excellent GIF) and hopping from tree to vine. Williams struggles to keep up, wisecracking in a very Samuel L. Jackson-esque manner: Anachronistic, sure, but at least entertaining.
By the time they’re joining forces with tribesmen and gorillas to loose water buffaloes on a Belgian encampment, viewers’ patience will likely have worn thin. You’d think the screenplay, by Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer, might have tried harder to escape the racist origins of the old “Tarzan” stories, which were rife with caricature. By having its black actors largely stand by and cheer as the white guy does most of the heavy lifting — not to mention keeping its plucky heroine literally handcuffed most of the time — “Tarzan” does little to adapt to modern times. Perhaps most punishingly of all for Skarsgard’s “True Blood” fans, it fails to ever put our hero in a skimpy loincloth.