JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE
A film review by Michael Dequina
Copyright 1997 Michael Dequina
Jungle 2 Jungle (PG) no stars (out of ****)
I was sitting here for about fifteen minutes trying to figure out a snappy lead for my review of the new Tim Allen "comedy" Jungle 2 Jungle until I realized it wasn't worth the trouble. This remake of the French blockbuster Little Indian, Big City (which was massacred by critics during its brief stateside run last year) is pure crap, plain and simple.
Uptight New York commodities trader Michael Cromwell (Allen), during a trip to visit his estranged-for-13-years doctor wife Patricia (JoBeth Williams) in the Amazon village of Lipo Lipo), discovers he has a 13-year-old son named Mimi Siku (unpromising newcomer Sam Huntington) whom Patricia raised in the wild with her. Michael takes Mimi back to New York with him per a promise he made to the boy, and hilarity supposedly ensues. Right now, three days after I've seen the film, I'm still waiting for the hilarity to ensue.
Just about everything about this film is sloppy, awful, and creatively bankrupt. In the Lipo Lipo-based first act, all director John Pasquin and writers Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon do is sic exotic animal after exotic animal on Michael. First piranhas. Then a spider. Then alligators. Then piranhas again. How funny. Things don't get any better once the action shifts to New York, with Mimi Siku running around in a loincloth, brandishing a bow and arrow, urinating in potted plants, killing birds with his bow and arrow, and cooking up Michael's co-worker Richard's (Martin Short) expensive tropical fish. What fun. Mimi Siku even climbs to the top of the Statue of Liberty in a moment a press mailing from Disney (complete with a working flashlight fashioned after the Statue's torch) says, "reaches new heights of hilarity." Whatever. Mimi Siku's ignorance of the ways of the "civilized" world is supposed to be charming, but it's just insulting. The character is an assemblage of every native cliche and stereotype you can think of wrapped up in a young Anglo package, which I guess is supposed to make it OK. I don't think so.
By the time Mimi Siku makes his climb up Lady Liberty, I thought the (bad) idea had been mined for whatever it was worth (nothing) and that the film was almost over. Not so. The film creaks along for about another forty minutes, introducing a couple of new plot threads fashioned just to prolong the agony. One thread involving a shady deal Richard makes with a Russian mobster (David Ogden Stiers) is a complete waste of time, a storyline whose only apparent purpose is to set up a truly painful Home Alone-style slapstick climax. Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, there's the second thread, the sappy, cloying, gag-inducing romance between Mimi Siku and Richard's clean-cut daughter Karen (LeeLee Sobiesky). To call this development cornball is an understatement.
In fact, to call Jungle 2 Jungle bad is an understatement. It's awful. Horrible. Garbage. A waste of time, money, and film stock. I'm sorry to say that most of the children in the audience ate this crap up, which is just another disturbing sign that America's youth is in trouble.
Michael Dequina mrbrown@ucla.edu | mj23@the18thhole.com Visit Mr. Brown's Movie Site at http://members.tripod.com/~MrBrown/ Personal Page: http://members.tripod.com/~MrBrown/home.html
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