Monkey business (Congo (DVD))

Name: moronboy

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	Congo (DVD)
Date:	13/08/00 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great fun

Disadvantages: But rubbish with it

Trashily enjoyable adaptation of Michael Crichton's very worst book, a story of intelligent gorillas, volcanoes, killer albino apes, buried treasure and hysterical accents. A group of scientists go deep into the Congo to find out what terrible fate befell a previous expedition hunting a perfect diamond which will revolutionise communications technology. Among them are a language specialist who has taught a gorilla English (Dylan Baker), a explorer in the pay of the Comms company (Laura Linney), a big game hunter (Ernie Hudson) and a general purpose comedy foreigner (Tim Curry) who appears to have swallowed 'King Solomons Mines' whole.

The special effects monkeys are good, allowing for some believably tense close encounters with angry silverbacks in the earlier sequences, and some hilariously cheesy psycho monkey action when the killers turn up at the end - the talking monkey is too exposed though, and there are too many close-ups on its all-too plasticky face. Linney is a credible heroine, and there is a superb interlude involving Delroy Lindo as an arrogant, hot-tempered African junta leader which ably satirises the type of nutter African nations are unlucky enough to get as their leaders.

But once the team retreat into the jungle, and it's all lasers and killings and eruptions and Curry's eyes bulging like hard boiled eggs as he spouts his loony dialogue, you're plunged deep into a modern day equivalent of a Gordon Scott Tarzan movie with added mayhem. It's perfectly entertaining in a throughly crap way, but blockbusters don't come any dafter.

Summary: