Movies - Poor primate picture
Curious George film is forgettable, uninspired
Cory Anderson Volunteer Staff
Curious George
Imagine Entertainment
Now Playing
1 ½ out of 5
“Show me the Monkey!” — Imagine Entertainment provided this tagline for the film, so I succumbed and saw the monkey, but I wish I hadn’t.
Curious George is a largely forgettable children’s film about the titular character’s trail of mischief that leads him from Africa to America. Director Matthew O’Callaghan’s directorial debut is noticeably missing the charm of the children’s books written by Margaret and Harry Augusto Rey, which revolve around the budding relationship between The Man in the Yellow Hat (known as Ted in the movie) and a cute little chimpanzee, George. (Despite the film’s tagline, Curious George is not a monkey, since he does not have a tail).
The film follows Ted’s (Will Ferrell) quest to Africa to recover a lost idol whose notoriety could potentially save the museum that he works for from bankruptcy. While his employer promotes the forthcoming arrival of what is expected to be a monument of epic proportions, Ted finds that the African idol is, in fact, a three-inch trinket.
George follows Ted aboard a boat to America, where we see many sequences involving Ted chasing after George to prevent yet another catastrophe; these chases distract from the thin plot and are drawn out for much too long. One of the more memorable pursuits includes an obvious homage to King Kong: George grows to Kong’s gigantic proportions and terrorizes the city.
Thickening the plot, the son of Ted’s employer, Junior (David Cross), quickly comes forth as the villain of the movie when he expresses his selfish desire to sell out the museum’s property and build a parking lot. Can Ted return to America with the extravagantly-sized idol before the dubious and deluded villain forces the museum into bankruptcy? We’ll find out after an hour filled with George finger-painting walls and floating across the city using balloons. Riveting.
Thankfully, in a crowded marketplace of computer-animation and CGI effects, Curious George uses the traditional two-dimensional format. Unfortunately, the animation appears more like a luminous, neon Jungle Book as opposed to the original children’s stories.
One welcome addition to the Curious George story is the movie’s soundtrack. Musician Jack Johnson has composed numerous songs specifically for the film. Since George is voiceless, the songs convey the monkey’s emotions to the audience, and provide the only affections we feel for any character throughout the 82-minute movie. Unfortunately, the most convincing performance of the all-star voice cast, which includes Dick Van Dyke, Eugene Levy and Drew Barrymore, is the little-known Frank Welker, who provides the grunts and other various chimpanzee sounds emitted by George.
The film provides a happy-go-lucky ending to every storyline, leaving the pre-pubescent audience thrilled and the adult audience uninterested. The script is utterly lacking in originality, offering nothing to anyone over the age of eight, with the possible exception of Johnson’s dreamy and catchy pop songs.
O’Callaghan successfully places the audience in the moment of action, allowing us to feel the vertical depths that the curious chimpanzee encounters when he is leaping across buildings, swinging atop bridges and huddling underneath moving cars. Curious George is not a terrible children’s film, but it definitely has less substance than what can be found up the little chimp’s butt.