So much as I thought I knew what this was about, it seems I completely misunderstood this movie. I had the idea this was some kind of action drama about conservation, like fighting poachers or something. Maybe a military operation in the jungle.
What this actually seems to have something to do with is a new species of killer gorilla and also a signing gorilla, and the preview I saw looked a lot funnier than I expected. So I’m completely at a loss for what to expect now, besides Tim Curry and Ernie Hudson being in it.
I very vaguely recall a movie with this title being around back then, but I don’t remember anything about it. I didn’t even remember it was one of the movies they tried putting Matthew Perry in.
I see it’s another movie titled after a song they can easily license. It could be a direct reference to the proverb, but as it’s a love story, it’s going to be a reference to the love song.
I definitely did not know this is about a rushed relationship between an American guy and a Mexican woman and the problems created when their lives and families catch up with their choices until now.
I never knew much more about this movie than that Matthew Broderick is in it and it’s probably some kind of political satire, so it always lived in my head near movies like Swing Vote, Welcome to Mooseport, and The Campaign.
On taking a closer look, this is centered around a high school class president race, and the central conflict seems to be between a teacher and a student, so I’m intrigued at the prospect of a more unorthodox satire and wondering what political parallels could develop from this dynamic. Or maybe I’ve gotten it completely wrong and this is just a study of high school politics, but I don’t think so. Stories that came from novels generally have some kind of more applicable theme.
Though the log line is essentially “Die Hard on a battleship”, the Navy setting somehow gets me thinking more of JackRyan. Thanks to the movies, I think of Jack Ryan as a civilian CIA bureaucrat, but a moment’s research turned up that he’s ex-Marine. So maybe Seagal’s character here is closer to Jack Ryan than I thought, but I was more interested on my initial discovery that Seagal is serving as a cook than when I found out he’s an ex-SEAL. It takes away from the appeal of an underdog for me the more prepared that underdog is for the challenge they face in the movie.
The fact that the terrorists are led by a disgruntled CIA operative intrigues me. Most 90s bad guys are generic terrorists, but they’re usually Eastern European, maybe with a specific ex-Soviet flavor. The head terrorist being rogue CIA opens up a possibility of critiquing American policies rather than just wrapping the good guys in the Stars and Stripes and painting the bad guys as whatever the top enemy of the US government is at the time. Though since this probably required extensive cooperation with the US Department of Defense in order to be able to use the battleship setting, I doubt it would be all that forward thinking.
I suspect that the reason the summaries I’ve seen of this are very limited is because it’s more in the style of a collection of skits vaguely assembled around a plot like most other farces. They don’t seem to think the story is nearly as important to sell it as “this has a connection to Police Academy! You like Police Academy, you’ll probably like this!”
George Lopez was the most prominent name I saw at first, but after digging a little deeper, I found credits pulled for Ray Walston and Martin Mull, which interest me more than George Lopez, who is fine but not somebody who really gets my attention.
The actual premise about a hapless ski patrol trying to fight back against a plot to get the resort owners’ permit removed so a ski school can take control seems a little confusing and hopefully the movie will provide more context about why all the players are related the way they are.
My best Friend’s Wedding. Predawn Productions 1997.
Before watching the movie:
I’ve been dimly aware of this as a relatively standout romantic comedy for a while, but I never really looked into it much. The idea of having to watch an old flame get married and how one copes with that is interesting, but as a romcom I don’t know if it’s going to have the kind of message I think would be more appropriate or if the old flame is going to leave the bride because true love.
Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz are like two different generations of romcom royalty and it’s a little odd they’re cast opposite each other. Dermot Mulroney is a name I’ve seen around from time to time but even looking over his filmography I cannot remember seeing him in anything, and he looks like a stand-in for whatever more recognizable actor they actually wanted. I guess I’ve seen Rupert Everett in things other than Inspector Gadget, but that’s the only thing I ever think of for him.
I saw one trailer for this movie very many times because it was on the tape for Thomas and the Magic Railroad or something else that played a lot at our house, but I don’t think I’ve actually seen the whole movie.
I completely spaced who played the father and somehow got to thinking it was Jack Nicholson, which would’ve been pretty late for Nicholson to take a role like this.
Anyway, I remember not being very interested at the time because the trailer leaned heavily on some sophomoric humor, but trailers rarely represent their movies well, especially when they have that kind of heavy reliance on a single note that isn’t at the core of the genre.
I haven’t been able to laugh at the presidency in years. At least, not as the product of something other than a mixture of horror, anger, and embarrassment. Washington/the Federal Government lately hasn’t been a source of cynical guffaws. But things have changed and there’s room to be relieved and somewhat relaxed again. For the foreseeable future, we’re returning to, at worst, garden variety corruption and only casual imperialism.
This movie came to me in a presidential-themed movie collection that I found when looking for a disk-based replacement to an old VHS copy of Dave, a favorite I’m looking forward to returning to soon, and could get a Movies of My Yesterdays if “soon” is not all that soon.
Despite having gone through a phase in my early teens when I got obsessed with and went through the filmographies of many actors including Christopher Lloyd, it seems I can still be surprised. I don’t recall knowing about this movie’s existence until immediately before deciding to review it. I was trying to find something weightier since it’s been a while since I’ve done good drama, but as soon as I saw Christopher Lloyd, my decision was made.
It seems this concerns a no-rules retreat camp created by teens who don’t want to be sent away to the camps chosen by their parents. I’m not sure how much my impression that the poster wants me to think it’s “Animal House, but with teens” comes entirely from the fact that Lloyd’s character is wearing a toga. Also the girl in the swimsuit seems a bit shoehorned in I guess.
One thing I recall about the circumstances of the George of the Jungle release was that it seemed to come out at about the same time as Disney’s Tarzan, but apparently this actually predates it by two years. Given what I know about animation production schedules, Tarzan was probably already in the works when they started on this, but just came out later. I now recall that it wasn’t until the direct to video sequel that they were able to reference Tarzan.
However, this was definitely part of a wave of Jay Ward cartoon adaptations made in the late 90s. As much as I like 2000’s The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (so much so that I did a redub of a sequence for college mainly because I thought there was a bad music decision that I wanted to fix. How did it go? Okay enough.) and Dudley Do-Right, I think this was the best of the bunch. Though it’s possible that’s just because I never saw any of the George of the Jungle cartoon, so I don’t know how badly it was changed. That didn’t stop me from loving the Inspector Gadget movie though.
George of the Jungle. Mandeville Films 1997.
Fabulously wealthy San Francisco heiress Ursula Stanhope has come to Burundi to explore the jungle, but is surprised when her equally rich but pompous fiance Lyle Van De Groot tracks her down and joins her expedition, insisting they should return home as soon as possible for the wedding. Lyle has been accompanied by two poachers who are after the White Ape, a legend of the Burundi jungle that could get them a fortune. In reality, the White Ape is actually George, a human who was lost in the jungle as a baby and raised by apes, and now is the King of the Jungle. When Lyle and Ursula are attacked by a lion, Lyle tries to abandon Ursula and run away, and George swings in to save her, bringing her back to his treehouse to help her recover from the shock. When Lyle and the poachers find Ursula and George’s treehouse, there’s an altercation that leads to Lyle accidentally shooting George, leading Ursula to bring him back to San Francisco for medical care. Having seen Lyle for the selfish coward that he is, next to the humble and gorgeous hero George, Ursula now finds herself with questions about her future, much to her status-obsessed parents’ chagrin.
Maybe this is again because I’m not familiar with the source material, but it still feels like this movie more naturally adapted to modern styles than the other cartoon movies I named above. It’s a cartoonish slapstick farce with a lot of self-aware commentary, sometimes even not delivered through the narrator, but it meshes with the 90s writing aesthetic somehow. George is a timeless klutzy hero, but Dudley is a relic of a different era, and Rocky and Bullwinkle spend their entire movie commenting on how they’re 30 years behind. The narration is really the only anachronism I can find in this movie, and the Narrator is a comic character in his own right.
There were things I was expecting in this movie that I guess I was remembering from the sequel. This is entirely in the jungle and in San Francisco (because the Americans won’t be interested if we don’t take the hero to America), except for a tag with Ape in Las Vegas, and I think I was remembering more scenes in other locations that are probably from the plot of that movie.
I still like this movie as much as I did then. The naked product placement was more noticeable now, but it didn’t bother me because it was often the joke. This is my favorite Brendan Fraser movie, and he did some great work in the 90s and 00s. George of the Jungle is a friend to you and me.
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