Saw this earlier and was absolutely blown away. Just Loved it. The visuals, the animations, locations, cinematography, voice acting, everything. Just so beautiful, delightful and thoroughly breathtaking. It's simple and predictable, but it's sort of made for kids as well as adults, so I can understand why.
My only real negatives were that I felt Scarjo and the Anaconda/Python were undercooked, and Baloo and Mowgli's relationship wasn't properly fleshed out, but I suspect both these things were a matter of time constraints with editing. Aside from that though, just magic. Every shot was a delight, and the characters were just so well realised. Shere Khan, Bhageera, King Louie, Baloo etc, they just nailed not only the designs, but also the VA that coincided. I couldn't have even imagined a better version of these characters.
I also really liked the little tweaks they made to the story, and to Mowgli's character. It just elevated it all, giving it that little bit of extra charisma, imagination and entertainment factor.
If I had to rate it off first viewing, I'd probably give it between a 9 or 9.5/10, but I generally dislike attributing scores after first viewings. The true testament to a quality movie is whether it can be equally entertaining with multiple viewings. I suspect for me, The Jungle Book will be.
Fantastic job Favreau. Loved The Chef and really enjoyed Iron Man as well, so this guy has yet to set a foot wrong for me.