CONGO
A film review by pcb@unicomp.net
Copyright 1995 pcb@unicomp.net
NO STARS
To put it succinctly, this movie was a piece of utter trash. If you did or did not read the book, you will certainly find it utterly disappointing. The plot is extremely *weak*, and the whole main idea from the book was *completely* changed. The book was about finding special diamonds for use in the super-computer industry, which would set the finder five years ahead of the competition, while the movie seemed to concern itself with finding the diamonds for use with some dumb laser, a totally *stupid* idea, and also with the bonds of father-son love, which has been totally overdone. They really might have had something if they had stuck with the book.
Another MAJOR black eye for this movie was its so called "special effects." The gorillas (especially amy) looked more like dogs than Gorillas, or maybe just people in suits. Also, some genius over at the production company thought it would be cool if this gorilla could talk using virtual reality gloves which interpret sign language into a voice (a really dumb one, I might add). This really became unbelievably stupid when amy began speaking to the other gorillas, and they seemed to understand her.
Some idiot also decided that the gorillas would be better if they just beat up their victims rather than smashing their heads in with a couple of stone bats. Now, that would have made the movie *almost* worth watching if there was some good blood and gore. Another fault in the movie was the ease with which the characters found the city of Zinj. It seemed that they just bumped into it, while in the book *major* research was done to find where the probable location of the city would be. This made the book more believable, and the movie totally unbelievable!
Finally, seeing CONGO was probably the low point of last week.
Conclusion: Save yourself six bucks on this one, and don't go see it.
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