Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)
Movie · 1984 · Adventure, Drama, Action, Romance · 2h 23m · PG · English
Curator score: 3.1/10 (32.2K ratings)
Overview
A shipping disaster in the 19th Century has stranded a man and woman in the wilds of Africa. The lady is pregnant, and gives birth to a son in their tree house. Soon after, a family of apes stumble across the house and in the ensuing panic, both parents are killed. A female ape takes the tiny boy as a replacement for her own dead infant, and raises him as her son. Twenty years later, Captain Phillippe D'Arnot discovers the man who thinks he is an ape. Evidence in the tree house leads him to believe that he is the direct descendant of the Earl of Greystoke, and thus takes it upon himself to return the man to civilization.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.1/10
IMDb: 6.4/10
Letterboxd: 3.16/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 79%
Metacritic: 62
TMDB: 6.4/10
Director
Hugh Hudson
Production
Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., Warner Bros. Pictures, WEA Records
Cast
Christopher Lambert, Andie MacDowell, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm, James Fox, Cheryl Campbell, Ian Charleson, Nigel Davenport, Nicholas Farrell, Richard Griffiths, Paul Geoffrey, Hilton McRae, David Suchet, Ravinder, John Wells, Paul Brooke, Tristram Jellinek, Roddy Maude-Roxby, Eric Langlois, Danny Potts
Curator Review
Verdict
A serious, unusually melancholy Tarzan adaptation with real visual grandeur and a strong sense of myth, but it can feel slow, uneven, and emotionally distant. If you want a prestige adventure that treats the jungle story as tragedy and identity drama rather than pulp spectacle, it’s worth a look.
Best for
viewers who like literary adventure dramas
fans of lush 1980s studio filmmaking
people interested in colonialism, identity, and civilization-vs-nature stories
viewers who prefer mood and atmosphere over action
Skip if
you want a fast, swashbuckling Tarzan movie
you need consistent action and momentum
you dislike restrained, old-fashioned prestige pacing
you prefer lighter or more playful adventure films
Overview
Greystoke is the rare Tarzan film that seems more interested in anthropology than escapism. It treats the legend as a tragic fable about language, class, and the cost of being pulled from one world into another, which gives it a seriousness that can be compelling even when the film itself feels stately to a fault.
Worth noting
The jungle material has genuine texture, and the production leans hard into grandeur: mist, foliage, ritual, and physical isolation. Christopher Lambert is an effective physical presence, and the film’s best stretches make the character feel like a creature of instinct rather than a conventional action hero.
Bottom line
What holds it back is the same prestige ambition that gives it weight. The pacing is deliberate, the emotional register can be stiff, and the movie often feels more admired than loved. Still, for viewers open to a somber, beautifully mounted adventure about loss of innocence, it has a distinctive pull.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Will Steele (3★) · 147 likes
I adore the fact that Robert Towne’s displeasure at this film’s rewrites led him to request they change his credit to that of his dog’s name - P.H. Vazak - but then the screenplay was nominated for an academy award.
So technically P.H Vazak the dog was nominated for an Oscar! You gotta love that!
threepenny (4★) · 105 likes
The most serious of all Tarzan adaptations, so serious they never once call him Tarzan. This movie tries to take the original concept and imagine how that would play out if it were real. How he would survive in the wild, raised by apes. How he would integrate into the human world when he was finally "saved". It ends up being a rather depressing story, beautifully filmed and acted. Christopher Lambert's first role, though he spends most of it grunting.… more The most serious of all Tarzan adaptations, so serious they never once call him Tarzan. This movie tries to take the original concept and imagine how that would play out if it were real. How he would survive in the wild, raised by apes. How he would integrate into the human world when he was finally "saved". It ends up being a rather depressing story, beautifully filmed and acted. Christopher Lambert's first role, though he spends most of it grunting.… more
HKFanatic (5★) · 42 likes
Can't believe it's taken me 36 years to see this—but, in a way, the delay was perfect, as "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes" reminds me so much of what I love about cinema that's now missing in it: Romance with a capital R. Grandeur. Patience. One senses that the filmmakers, including partial screenwriter Robert Towne, inherently understood that movie-making is myth-making and Tarzan is one of our great 20th century myths.
And yet it also seems… more
CJ Probst (2★) · 36 likes
I’m going to throw this out there to the LetterBoxd community. I don’t get the whole Tarzan thing. The character has never interested me, not when I was a wee lad and not now. I had no interest in the recent one that just came out in 2016, nor when I was younger did I ever have any interest in the Disney animated version which I still have never seen it to this day. Same with He-man. I guess shirtless… more I’m going to throw this out there to the LetterBoxd community. I don’t get the whole Tarzan thing. The character has never interested me, not when I was a wee lad and not now. I had no interest in the recent one that just came out in 2016, nor when I was younger did I ever have any interest in the Disney animated version which I still have never seen it to this day. Same with He-man. I guess shirtless… more
Joe (3★) · 31 likes
Welcome to the Jungle
Tarzan is basically a pulp character so I don't have any idea why anyone thought it was necessary to give him this lavish studio treatment like he's TE Lawrence or something -- not that I'm complaining! This is not even in any consistent sense an action movie, it's been several years since I read Burroughs' book but my memory and a quick look at Wikipedia say that several action sequences were cut out to make room… more
1988 · Adventure, Drama, Family · 1h 37m · PG · Curator 7.1/10 (37.7K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Night Flight Plus, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A largely nonverbal survival story with deep empathy for animal life and a similar fascination with the natural world.