The film is a Nepali language, Nepalese spinoff cringe fest - disguised as a reboot - named Jungle Love, after the Bollywood movie which inspired it. Unlike the (name slapped official spinoff) Daiei Buruuba film, the (admittedly more hilarious) Hindi language cult classic, and the (rather more whimsical) Canuck kids adventure inspired by both previous films, this one is the second worst film adaptation overall thanks to a beyond screwed up production history. Only the recent Burmese film Wild and Tame would topple it in terms of overall infamy.
The film was likely conceived by Samir Miya Pawariya, when his higher up B.S. Balami’s more obvious MockBuster hit film, Junglee Manchhe, gained a plausible following on home video. The year it was conceived in was 2010, thus it had a shorter yet more infamous schedule than the schlocky Bollywood and Canadian movies which preceded it. An even bigger tragedy is that it was being over-censored, not only during the production schedule, but also before the actual writing and filming had even begun, even though it still came out as a hyper violent good-bad movie. People who likely got hurt and then died (during and after the production schedule) include Jessica Khadka, a surprisingly talented but internationally forgotten actress (and LGBTQ+ rights activist) who took her own life in 2012. To respect her, the assault scandal that led to her life cut short wasn’t totally her fault.
Chances of them not knowing it wasn't a fully original movie are higher than they would like to admit. Also not helping is that actors like Ms Jessica herself are also little-known outside of Nepal and its multi-ethnic diaspora. It’s thankfully downplayed for Yoshimasa Ikeda as the film’s main inspiration’s creator, since he has posthumously gained some recognition in both the Francophone and Anglophone worlds, not only for being the most iconic Japanese translator of Arsene Lupin books, but also for one of his propaganda works being mentioned on a Gizmodo article about interwar Japanese pulps (or at least an equivalent with fairly high pulp content).
Is it a full-on adult only Tarzan movie from the South Asian Subcontinent also? Nope, not that right. The sources that the film most likely descends from are the first four out of six Baruuba books of Yoshimasa Ikeda. Although the preceding Bollywood movie was filmed in various tropical Indian locations like Chalakudy, the main setting and filming location of its fellow part-inspiration's Nepalese reboot is a pretty forest of Sal trees, in front of huge Himalayan mountains in Nepal. The similarities between Nepali Jungle Love’s sal forest and Son of the Dawn’s monsoonal forest are pretty weak and distant.
In an ironic twist, the GoodTimes-distributed Canuck Jungle Boy film is actually the best of them all, even though its highly abridged plot is largely but loosely based on only the first two BaRuuba no Bōken books in comparison, as it surely has some elements of Yoichiro Minami’s Southeast Asian-set works.
The same cannot be said for the Baruuba books, where the mountains and savannas complement a thick bunch of varying jungles within the Mid-Northeast Congolian (not to be confused with the colloquial Congolese, as in the formerly French controlled Republic of the Congo)/Southwest + Southernmost Ugandan border.
The film's resident hero is different, in that his actor's build is somewhat closer to (albeit much shorter than) that of the plain faced but muscular Baruuba as portrayed by Omizu Suzuki’s art, whereas Baruuba’s expy the first Buruuba (also known as Zamba according to Kyuuta Ishikawa) was played by beloved Japanese swimmer Yoshihiro Hamaguchi (1926-2011).
Said actor is Binod Shrestha, a plain looking, internationally little-known action guy playing Nishtam, a wild young man who is a combo of the 4 previous heroes in all but ethnicity and clothes. Like Raja and Takeena, his destiny is to have his own job by becoming a forest protector, but unlike him, he doesn’t want to get married until later on.
Its main female star is the late Jessica Khadka as a moody young fella, who tries her best not to follow the twisted rules of her own male dominator and who is a dark haired combination of Takeena’s lover Melissa and Baruuba's lover Grace.
Fellow members of the cast include animals from a crapload of stolen stock footage, a baby and a school aged kid as Nishtam in his early years, an older actress as Nishtam's mother’s former friend (an estranged neighbour!) with a sordid home life, a middle aged actor and actress pair as Nishtam’s parents, a bunch of actors as money hungry mobsters, a more attractive actress (Seema KC) as a vamp, a crowd of actors as moderately stereotypical Raute-inspired tribals, and an Asian elephant who played Nishtam's beloved animal sidekick named Deena.
The world's only Nepali filmic take on the Baruuba mythos, with some elements copied from the 3 preceding movies and a 2007 Bollywood Z-grade film (also known by that title), had Nishtam be the son of a former friend to a smothering and overworked woman, who had to give him away for adoption on the rapids of a river, waiting for him to just get lost. What’s even worse was that the unmarried parents were way too overworked to think of him as the human that he’ll become. Instead, baby Nishtam was adopted by a chief and his own family in a tribal village.
The film story continued with something else entirely. Years later, the chief taught young Nishtam how to become a top warrior of his adoptive tribal family, and it finally got paid off in his adulthood. The process not only had him climb upon a bunch of Sal trees, but he also learnt to become a survivalist who learnt tactics from and made pranks on the animals nearby. Cue the 'Strangers Like Me' cover!
A couple of years later, a snobbish girl takes a look at marrying a loopy gangster dude, even though he complements the deal well and then they sing like crazy. Meanwhile, the leader of a logging mob syndicate tends to send his goons (such as her would be groom) to places as far from the city as he can see. They’d like to expect the humbly clothed natives as fucking weaklings, but nothing works in their twisted favour.
Finally, the main plot has begun! It has him and his female buddy meet each other for the first time, which was during an epic mobster brawl, where he has fought barely two dozen mobsters.
There’s a somewhat loveable vamp and her crazy boyfriend dancing together in various places, only for the song that they sing turn out to be a tepidly goofy item number. Instead of a twerking spree, the family friendlier floss dances are shown in full glory, which is made possible due to either one of the super messed up Cinema Hall laws. Is villain-destroying violence preferred over non-PR0N erotica?
The dramatic hijinks continue until some of them are implied to be arrested. Although the parents are still too overworked to tell their son that they can’t be with him forever, the wild man now knows that his future destiny will be that of a forest protector instead, thus he will marry a more suitable lady later.
To be fair, not only is it a martial arts centric reboot of all the previous three films (albeit filmed digitally) based on the Baruuba books, but it’s yet another (mundane) non-hardcore unofficial adaptation of its parent book series, albeit on a really low budget. Thus, the movie is so bad it’s good overall, despite the heavy violence. A factual standout amongst other things is that it has featured Jessica Khadka’s most famous role to date, which was that of the wild man’s unpredictable buddy.
The makeshift soundtrack, despite being filled with stolen copyrighted music, isn't too bad, since youngsters may hear the sordid truth that there are soundtracks much worse than that. Its few millions of views on YouTube indicate that it likely has been a memetic sleeper hit at the cutthroat Nepalese internet box office. Frankly, since it was made under depressing circumstances in the early 2010s, a better sequel may not happen yet until (the overall quality of) domestic Nepalese cinema improves drastically within this decade, the next one or so.
