By Geno McGahee
I like gorillas. So, if a movie has a gorilla there is a good chance that I will enjoy it. In the 1988 live action Disney film “MIGHTY JOE YOUNG,” we get a huge gorilla and that sounded like a good thing to me. As you know, I’ve been on a Disney live action spree lately, focusing mostly on 1990s and early 2000s flicks. I’ve been punished with the last two, THE SHAGGY DOG and MR. MAGOO, but I am happy to say that my luck has changed.
Dr. Ruth Young (Linda Purl) takes care of gorillas along with her young daughter, Jill (Mika Booorem), and I recognized Mika right away. She was in RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS. I have seen that movie a lot. I’m not sure why I have, but I have. It was probably James Woods. I like James Woods.
The first 20 minutes or so of MIGHTY JOE YOUNG was pretty boring. A few things happened like a mean poacher, Strasser (Rade Serbedzija), trying to kill a gorilla only to have his index finger and thumb bit off. Out of anger, he kills Ruth and Joe the Gorilla’s mother. Now we got two orphans and the strange thing is that Ruth demanded her daughter take care of Joe. Her mother was shot. You’d think that she’d say “get help” or “get a fucking EMT”, but she was only thinking of the gorilla. She elected to lie there with her daughter and just drop dead. I think she would have lived if she got help rather than placing this burden and trauma on Jill.
12 years go by and now young Jill is grown up Jill (Charlize Theron) and she looks out for Joe who is now enormous. Poachers desperately wants to kill him and Strasser is still an asshole and would gladly kill him too. The only one that wants to make sure that somebody doesn’t blow Joe’s brains out is Gregg (Bill Paxton), a representative for a sanctuary for animals and he has a home for him.
At first, Jill wants Gregg to fuck off, but when the poachers become a real threat, she agrees to bring Joe to California. This is when the movie finally starts moving forward. There is something about seeing crazy shit happen in familiar places that I really enjoy. King Kong fucking shit up in New York City is something that I can’t get enough of. Same with Godzilla. Any monster destroying NYC is OK.
Joe is now in a sanctuary in L.A. I don’t know if he loves L.A., but that song is now stuck in my head and I don’t like that song. All is well and Jill is given the job of basically keeping Joe in line, but shit hits the fan when Strasser comes back and winds him up and he goes ape shit at an investors gathering.
Joe is now loose in the city and he’s fucking up cars and stepping on people and throwing a genuine shit fit. At this point, I was thoroughly enjoying the movie, but then it gets better. As Jill and Gregg try to beat Strasser to Joe, they head to an amusement park. A huge monster gorilla, guns and amusement park…now this is a movie.
MIGHTY JOE YOUNG is a really decent film, but it’s also really unremarkable. When it was fun, it was really fun, but there is a lot of buildup and down time. It’s a 2 hour movie and probably could have benefitted from an edit where we lost 15 minutes to keep the viewer interested. If not that, give us more gorilla going crazy.
I think I was spoiled watching GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE 1 and 2 before watching this. I was hoping the gorillas would dance and play cards and sing, but they acted more like gorillas here. I would have been happy if they incorporated some of that fun into this one, but they tried to keep it more real, I suppose…as real as a fifteen foot tall gorilla can be.
I should also note that I was disappointed with Bill Paxton here. He seemed bored with this role and there was no chemistry with Theron in this. He had more chemistry with that old bird in TITANIC. I’m glad there was no sex scene there. My point is that Paxton is good and should have been an A lister but he was phoning it in here and it shows and Theron had no interest in him here. It was obvious, but if you are Jill (Theron) and you are seeing Joe’s fifteen foot long junk, Gregg’s dong won’t be impressive. Perhaps this was explored in the three hour version.
In the end, I enjoyed this film, despite the slow burn of it. Sit through the first 30 minutes and it gets fun.
