It’s not surprising that kids go ape over George of the Jungle, which they do, but it is surprising just how much fun it is for adults as well. Based on the Saturday morning cartoon by the same name this live action version tells the story of George, lost in the jungle as a baby and raised by the apes to become King of the Jungle. George is very happy living in the jungle with Shep, an elephant who thinks he’s George’s dog and his friend Ape, a highly intelligent and well cultured talking ape. But when George saves the beautiful heiress Ursula from a lion it leads him down a jungle trail involving her evil ex-fiancé Lyle, German mercenaries, a kidnap plot against Ape, a trip to the city by the Bay and, most frightening of all, Ursula’s shrewish mother. Compared to all of that swinging headfirst into trees may wind up seeming fairly comfortable.
From the very beginning with its catchy opening theme, which was also the original theme of the cartoon, to the hilarious Vegas style ending that occurs during the closing credits George of the Jungle is enormous fun. As many comedy’s have before it, George of the Jungle could have easily have fallen flat on its face given that the line between parody and stupidity is such a fine, slippery thing. But George of the Jungle, with its intentionally corny, but wonderfully effective voice over narration, marvelous acting, and attitude of ‘yes, this is silly, but lets have some fun with it, ok?’ easily keeps its audience laughing with it; not at it. All of the actors did excellent jobs, but the best performance by far was that of Brendan Fraiser who played George. Frasier seemed to revel in the part playing it one moment with sweet sincerity and the next with what my Grandmother used to call a ‘you know what’ eating grin that makes the audience feel as though he were letting them in on the joke. John Cleese also deserves mention since his excellent work in providing the voice for Ape almost stole the show from Brendan Frasier.
If George of the Jungle has any flaw it would be that the humor is fairly low brow even to the point of one of the villains falling face first into a pile of elephant ‘you know what’. Yuck. But low brow doesn’t mean low quality and there wasn’t a single moment of George of the Jungle that my four kids and I didn’t find entertaining. So grab a jungle vine and swing on over to your local video store to rent George of the Jungle.
Grade: A+
