Movie Review: With Orangutan, Disneynature Completes Its Best Unofficial Trilogy
Rudyard Kipling brought the jungles of India to life through The Jungle Book, filling them with unforgettable animal characters whose social dynamics mirrored our own. In a sense, Disneynature has been doing exactly that for nearly two decades now. With Orangutan, the brand's latest Earth Day film, the parallels feel more intentional than ever — the film even incorporates "I Wanna Be Like You" from the 1967 animated classic, leaning into the Disney magic of Disneynature more than perhaps any film before it.
Meet Indah, a 9-year-old female orangutan living in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra, a teenager in orangutan years. Indah lives with her mother, Diann, and her 2-year-old brother Bimo, but the time has come for Indah to leave the nest, or the tree, as it were. Orangutan chronicles Indah’s first leaps into the wider forest world.
Orangutans have the longest childhoods of any animal in nature, and Orangutan explores why. Survival in these forests requires extraordinary intelligence, and being on the lower class of orangutan society, Diann has had to learn many survival techniques, which she passed on to Indah. The film not only documents this behavior, but also includes Indah making a friend by sharing the wealth.
The film delights in the full ecosystem of the Sumatran rainforest, delivering one gorgeous montage after another: gibbons swinging, Thomas' leaf monkeys leaping, gliding snakes and draco lizards launching themselves through the air, and an unforgettable nighttime sequence featuring moon moths, whip scorpions, giant-eyed tree geckos, and the wide-eyed slow loris. The dominant male Bintang, a 200-pound flanged male whose thunderous calls shake the trees, gets some of the most impressive footage in the film. A comical sun bear who benefits from Bintang's tree-toppling habit — and who Indah follows to a honey-filled discovery — is a supporting scene-stealer of the first order.
Josh Gad brings a warm, playful energy to the narration that suits the material perfectly. Best known as the voice of Olaf in the Frozen films, Gad leans into the humor and heart of Indah's story without ever undercutting its emotional weight. He even gets to deliver a sun bear pun that lands with the spirit of a Jungle Book sidekick. Director Mark Linfield, a 30-year veteran of wildlife filmmaking, clearly has deep affection for his subjects, and that love comes through in every frame.
Nitin Sawhney's score — built on piano, strings, and woodwinds with an optimistic, searching melody — is complemented by a curated selection of songs that underscore the film's themes of friendship and belonging, including Xavier Rudd's "Follow the Sun" and Van Morrison's "Days Like This."
Fans of Disneynature's primate films will find Orangutan to be a delightful companion piece to Chimpanzee (2012) and Monkey Kingdom (2015), completing what feels like an informal trilogy of films about the surprising depth of our closest animal relatives. Born in China (2017) also featured the golden snub-nosed monkey, but these three form their own throughline — each one revealing a layer of primate society and culture that feels familiar.
In celebration of the film, the Disney Conservation Fund is supporting Wildlife Asia and the Leuser Conservation Forum to protect Sumatran orangutans, elephants, and tigers across more than five million acres of forest habitat, as well as helping to rebuild the Ketambe Research Center — the research station whose team supported the filmmakers in the field. Viewers can learn more at sumatranorangutan.org.
Orangutan is a joyful, funny, and quietly profound Earth Day celebration that reminds us how much we have in common with our distant cousins in the treetops. It's the kind of film that makes you want to protect what's left of these ancient forests, and like the best Disney films, it’s full of family and heart.
Disneynature Orangutan begins streaming on Disney+ on Earth Day, April 22nd.
I give Disneynature Orangutan 5 out of 5 cemenang fruits.