bryan says...![]() Look, when you tell people you're going to watch a bunch of monkey movies, you get a lot of the inevitable suggestions of reviewing Mighty Joe Young. I just so happened to own a VHS copy of the movie that I picked up for 99 cents at Goodwill a few years back, since it was one of my absolute favorites growing up.
What do I have to say to 8 year old Bryan? "Thank god you'll start liking good movies some day...". At some point in the last decade, I overcame my love for movies like Master of Disguise, The Core and this one and started realizing there was more to film than fart jokes. Mighty Joe Young might have left those behind, but I almost wished it hadn't. The movie is so by-the-numbers that anything else would have added a bit of excitement - even if it was Bill Paxton teaching Charlize Theron to spit. Theron and Paxton are the films leads; A scientist (or something, played by Paxton) 'discovers' Joe and begs his favorite blond woman (Theron) to let him take them to L.A. where he will live a better life. Obviously this is doesn't happen when they get there - and a whole bunch of exciting twists and turns result in Joe going crazy and people wanting him to put down. Except it wasn't exciting, and these 'twists' could be called from the other side of the rain forest. My biggest question is, how on earth did this movie get made without them buying the rights to King Kong?? We've got a GIANT MONKEY in love with a SKINNY BLOND who is transported from his home to a large American city where he is mistreated, ultimately going on a destructive tirade and even CLIMBING A TALL STRUCTURE IN THE CLIMAX OF THE MOVIE. Seriously? Seriously. The writers/Disney call it an homage film. I call them hacks. My biggest issue with the movie (besides the fact that it is such a blatant Kong rip off) is that it really did have the resources to be good. While there are moments of terrible imagery, the effects for the most part are decently impressive for a 90's movie (though they have nothing on Jurassic Park). At the very list, a movie like this should be visually stunning - and the 'on location' shots of landscape were indeed great - but most of the movie was ruined by Ron Underwood's blind direction. He uses angles that make his cast look hideous, ruin any sort of depth or emotion to a shot, or add any excitement to the movie. How this guy got the job, I don't know. But at least he hasn't done much since...'cept this. I give Mighty Joe Young a generous 1.5 pumps of butter. Rewatch Value: I'd take any adaptation of King Kong over this one. Or even Curious George. Seriously, keep it away. | Emily says...![]() There are countless movies that I loved to watch when I was a kid that I still happily sit through even though every line makes me roll my eyes and choke back vomit. From watching Iron Will to Balto (yeah, I've always been a self-proclaimed dog fanatic), my sentimental side occasionally conquers sound reason, and I reminiscence while watching childhood favorites. Mighty Joe Young was never a favorite even as a child, though--and now I know why.
Young is what one might call "an embarrassment to film." With a cheesy, poorly written script, a mediocre (at best) cast, and a weirdly Asian over-sized robotic monkey, there is really nothing redeeming about Young, and I'm pretty positive I considered gouging my eyes out multiple times while viewing it. One of my biggest problems with the film is that the script never even attempts to explain why this ape, who was, as we see at the beginning of the film, once a normal size, went through a massive growth spurt and now towers over cars. I feel like the writers thought that audiences would just accept it because Joe is basically a low-budget Disney version of King Kong (complete with his own blonde bestie). But I was not buying it. Honestly, if the 1998 Matthew Broderick Godzilla movie can offer an explanation for its giant lizard, any film should be able to account for a mammoth gorilla. Worse than the plot holes, though, were the villains. Rade Serbedzija plays Andrei Strasser, the leader of a poaching group that happily kills humans in its attempt to snag some apes...yeah...As if their ridiculous motivation for brutality isn't enough, though, both Serbedzija and Peter Firth, who plays his scary sidekick Garth, opt to try out their embarrassingly over-exaggerated accents for the film. They basically embody every caricature/parody of a villain ever. Congratulations! Naveen Andrews aka Sayid from Lost also makes an embarrassing appearance at the film's beginning. He probably has never told anyone he was in it, though, so I forgive him. Overall, the film was a train wreck from beginning to end. A monkey could have come up with a better story line. I give Mighty Joe Young .5 pumps of butta. Rewatch Value: Kill me first. |