Chimpanzee in 60 seconds: my “Reel Faith” review.
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Disneynature’s
Chimpanzee, the latest family-friendly nature documentary from
Earth directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, depicts a surprising twist in the early life of a young chimpanzee nicknamed “Oscar” living in the Taï Forest in the Ivory Coast. Dr. Jane Goodall, the world’s foremost expert in chimpanzees, has seen the film, and discussed it with me via phone a couple of days ago.
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B |
*** |
+2-1|
Kids & Up
Disneynature’s
Chimpanzee has the makings of a great nature documentary. It takes us places other films haven’t and shows us sights we haven’t seen on any screen. Visually, it’s a triumph of intripid nature documentary filmmaking, with an extraordinary and heartwarming twist in the lives of a chimpanzee community. Yet like other recent nature flicks, including
Arctic Tale and
African Cats, it’s wrapped in increasingly tiresome, condescending kiddie-movie packaging. It’s like discovering a rare dish prepared by eminent chefs, drizzled with waxy treacle and stuffed in a Happy Meal box.
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C+ |
*** |
-2|
Teens & Up
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a smartly made, effective movie — but what sort of movie is it, exactly?
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B |
*** |
+0|
Teens & Up*
Peter Jackson’s
King Kong is one of those mad movies, like Baz Luhrmann’s
Moulin Rouge! or Tim Burton’s
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, that fully justifies and deserves all the best and worst that can be said for or against them.
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B |
*** |
-1|
Teens & Up*
Adapted by Rod Serling from Pierre Boulle’s Swiftian social
satire, Planet of the Apes is basically a feature-length
"Twilight Zone" episode, with all that that implies for good and
ill. There’s an ironic sci-fi reversal of real-world conditions,
a rather thin plot padded to fill out the running time,
heavy-handed but sincere allegorical moralizing,
thought-provoking social satire, and a stunningly imagined
climactic twist.
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C |
**½ |
-2|
Teens & Up*
Helena Bonham Carter is also convincingly simian as the
chimpanzee Ari, though less so than Thade, since she has to be
visibly feminine and potentially attractive to the human lead
(Mark Wahlberg). But the gorillas, like Attar (Michael Clarke
Duncan) and Krull (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), are as compellingly
realistic as Thade, if not quite as expressive.
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