Mighty Joe Young (1998) 2 stars out of 4. Starring Bill Paxton and Charlize Theron
Mighty Joe Young is not a good movie. It's an OK outing, that can't decide whether it wants to be a cutsy kid's movie or a special effects outing for adults.
Therefore, it has a schizophrenic feel and fails to accomplish either mission.
This updated remake of the 1949 adventure suffers in comparison.
The original, with special effects by the legendary Willis O'Brien, always has placed a distant second to O' Brien's other famous creation, King Kong. Mighty Joe Young can be considered Kong's distant, gentle cousin.
Like the original, this contemporary version begins in Africa. But times have changed. So instead of a farmer-hunter, we have a Dian Fossey-like anthropologist studying gorillas. When poachers attack the gorilla tribe she is observing, she is killed as is the mother of Joe, a baby gorilla befriended by the anthropologist's little daughter, Jill.
Joe and Jill become inseparable, growing up in the deep jungle, where Jill has taken her mother's place.
Joe has grown to enormous height and weighs a ton, literally.
Jill and Joe are lured to America by Bill Paxton's Greg O'Hara, who offers the pair safety from the poachers out to capture or kill Joe.
In Los Angeles, Joe becomes the star attraction at a nature preserve, but things go awry and Joe is hunted as a menace.
You know the rest. Joe becomes a hero, the bad guys are thwarted.
It's all juvenile fun, by-the-numbers, you-fill-in-the-blanks filmmaking. The actors, who also include very lovely Charlize Theron as Jill) give adequate perfomances.
Yet one must realize that the actors spent a lot of time emoting to thin air, imagining where Joe would be a screen. It's not easy to perform like that, so Theron and Paxton must be given some due for pulling it off.
But it is Rick Baker's special effects who are the film's real stars. Joe is a big ham, though not as corny nor as menacing as in the original.
This big gorilla is really a teddy bear.
Mighty Joe Young is predictable and factory-made filmmaking. It's an OK way to while a way a couple of hours over the Christmas break.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or at cbloom@iquest.net
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