Jack Nicholson's best performance in the past five years? With all due respect to Batman and The Witches of Eastwick, it just may be a half-hour stint Nicholson did for, of all things, a children's video. He is narrator of The Elephant's Child, an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's whimsical story about how the elephant got its trunk. Backed by the music of Bobby McFerrin, Nicholson gives a droll, spirited reading, wrapping his tongue around Kipling's sensuous words -- "the great, gray-green, greasy Lim-po-po River" -- like a gourmet savoring oysters.
By the same token, it would be hard to imagine a...