BEFORE: More monkeys tonight - no, wait, I mean apes. They get so sensitive about that, don't you know. Another look at an APE society tonight. Linking from "Rise of the Planet of the Apes", James Franco was also in "Milk" with character actor Peter Jason, who's somewhere in tonight's film. I bet he's playing either a military guy or a reporter...
THE PLOT: When an expedition to the African Congo ends in disaster, a new team is assembled to find out what went wrong.
AFTER: Speaking of people wearing ape suits, that sort of thing dominates tonight. Gorilla FX by Stan Winston, who did some great effects work ("Aliens") and some not-so-great ("Manimal").
This film has an impressive pedigree - based on a novel by Michael Crichton, the writer of "Jurassic Park", with a screenplay by John Patrick Shanley, screenwriter of "Moonstruck", and directed by Frank Marshall, director of "Alive" and producer of "Back to the Future" and "Indiana Jones" films. So what the heck happened here? Like the missing expedition, all we know is that something went horribly wrong.
God, where to begin? An expedition to Africa has many different agendas - to release a "talking" gorilla back into the wild, to find giant diamonds, and to figure out what happened to the previous expedition, even though their last transmission makes it pretty clear they died horribly. It's too much - if you try to do everything at once, you can end up doing nothing well.
Thwarted by government coups in several countries, they somehow find the exact spot they're looking for, even though no one at any point ever consults one of those new-fangled "map" thingies, and discover that the previous team was attacked by evil gorillas, even though we're told by the gorilla expert that's impossible, gorillas aren't aggressive. So, is the expert wrong, or is the movie wrong?
If so, he'd fit right in with a team consisting of a Romanian financier who has no money, and an ex-CIA communications expert who has no communications skills. Oh, but she can cobble a laser together, so that's something. But she's the only woman ever not interested in a giant diamond, so go figure.
NITPICK POINT: Again, Africa is a big place. If you need to go to a specific spot, just find an expedition that's going to Africa, give them a wad of cash, and after a random parachute drop, you'll probably end up very close to where you need to be.
NITPICK POINT #2: My science education stopped at 11th-grade physics, but I'm pretty sure there's a difference between an industrial diamond and a valuable gem-type diamond. Similarly, I think there's a difference between a communications laser and the kind you blow stuff up with. Actually, is there really a kind you blow stuff up with, or is that just in sci-fi films?
Also starring Laura Linney (last seen in "Searching for Bobby Fischer"), Dylan Walsh (last seen in "Secretariat"), Ernie Hudson (last seen in "Speechless"), Tim Curry (last seen in "The Three Musketeers" (1993)), Joe Don Baker, with cameos from Bruce Campbell (last seen in "Intolerable Cruelty"), John Hawkes (last seen in "Contagion"), Joe Pantoliano, Delroy Lindo and Jimmy Buffett (!!)
RATING: 3 out of 10 sesame cakes
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