Monday, August 14, 2006
What's Left? - Going Ape! (1981)
In 1981, Jeremy Joe Kronsberg was riding high on the success of his first two features, Every Which Way But Loose and the sequel, Any Which Way You Can. The world was waiting for his next project. But after two movies about the friendship between a man and an orangutan, Kronsberg was out of ideas. To cure his writers block, he allegedly traveled to Mexico and spent a week ingesting peyote and datura root with an ancient Brujo, and, as the legend goes, on the fourth day he received a vision that would inspire his next movie: a story about the friendship between a man and THREE orangutans. Thus, Going Ape! was born.
Tony Danza (star of Who's the Boss?) plays Foster, who stands to inherit $5 Million when his father, the owner of a circus, dies. But this money comes with a deadly price. Foster must care for three orangutans--Winky, Sweetie and the suggestively-named Randy Bananas--for a year. If anything happens to them--if they so much as catch a cold--the money goes to the zoological society. Kronsberg pulls no punches in his depiction of a corrupt, cynical society in which even the zoological society president will hire Mafia thugs to try and thwart Foster's efforts in the hope of securing the cash, and he keeps the tension ratcheted to white-knuckle levels through the running time.
This mixture of comedy and noir baffled audiences, and the film was met with outright hostility by the critical community upon its release. Recently, however, there has been a revival of interest in this title, with many revisionist critics coming to the films defense. This rethink has been lead by the maverick internet critic known as Calinara, who published her defense of the film on Amazon.ca. "Goin Ape was not received well by the professional critics when this movie was released to theaters in 1981 but I watched it on HBO and I thought it was a very cute movie with some really funny scenes," Calinara argues. "This movie is cute and has some slapstick humor and I recommend it to people who like movies featuring animals and movies with slapstick humor and also to fans of the actors in Goin' Ape." Taking up the torch, online writers have been dissecting the subtext in the film, and fans have been fervently discussing it on message boards. Now the ball is in Paramount's court. If they want to cash in on this wave of interest with a DVD release, now is the time. Two of the three orangutans are still alive to provide a commentary (Sweetie having taken her own life in the early 90's after years of unemployment and depression). In the words of Calinara, "I would like to see this movie put out on a DVD (Widescreen). But even a DVD that has widescreen on one side and fullscreen on the other side would be ok."
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This was brilliant, Chris. Awesome work.
OH YES...Excelllence, man.
I'd also demand a DTS track...one can't truly be submerged in simian hijinks without.