Director David Yates must think he’s got a free pass after directing four successful Harry Potter films. That’s the only explanation for his choice to make The Legend of Tarzan, an uninspired update of Edgar Rice Burroughs famous character. There’s also the fact that Warner Bro’s decided to release the film in the same summer as Disney’s update of The Jungle Book, a film that has everything that this one doesn’t. At least Yates has Fantastic Beasts later this year.

Instead of simply remaking Tarzan’s origin, Yates decides to splice it into a plot about corrupt bureaucrats of the Belgian government trying to take advantage of Congo. Let’s just say it involves saying the word infrastructure a lot. In order to stop the government’s envoy, played by Christoph Waltz in generic villain mode, the British Prime Minister enlists the help of John Clayton III the man who was once Tarzan, played by the well-cast Alexander Skarsgård. Along with his wife Jane, Margot Robbie in another wasted role, and ally George Washington Williams, Samuel Jackson in pay check mode, Tarzan returns to the jungle.

The overly complicated set-up can’t hide the fact that this movie is really dumb. Unlike The Jungle Book, which treated even its most serious moments with skill, and grace, The Legend of Tarzan is so self-serious it borders on comical. The cast, which is fll of great actors, are given nothing to work with, each character is no more than a two-dimensional archetype. Another problem is how familiar we are with Tarzan. The attempt to bypass an origin movie by making the origin a sub-plot only serves to stop the plot dead. When the movie is about to gather some momentum, we get another predictable flashback: this is where Tarzan fights an ape, this is where he meets/saves Jane for the first time. This would be worse if the main plot was actually interesting, so there’s that at least.

But the real failure of The Legend of Tarzan is the effects. This is what we’ve come for: Tarzan swinging through trees. Instead we get a bad computer-animated version of him swinging through more computer animation. This wouldn’t be a problem normally: as a modern audience we can suspend our disbelief if the CGI is imaginative enough, but here it’s just shoddy.

The Legend of Tarzan is anything but. It’s convoluted, and at the same time lazy, story-telling is made all the more obvious by the cheap looking effects. Next time Tarzan, just stay in the jungle.