It should come as no surprise that Chimpanzee – a G-rated documentary by Disneynature – doesn’t quite give the unfettered look at survival in the wild that viewers have come to expect from fantastic series such as Planet Earth.
No, Chimpanzee is a whole other animal. On the one hand, the film is a visual feast detailing groups of chimps in their Tanzanian forest home. On the other hand, the movie’s laughably contrived narrative almost causes the condensed 78-minute experience to fall apart completely.
Granted, this is a children’s movie, so the expectation of moral complexity in the animal kingdom is a bit of a stretch, but at the same time, there are simply far too many liberties being taken with the storyline for viewers to take the film seriously.
The film follows Oscar, a 3-year-old chimp living in paradise with his mother. For whatever reason, the filmmakers decided that Oscar and company would play the nice chimps – with names like Freddy and Grandpa – and their neighbors are the bad chimps, led by the apparently repugnant Scar. (Apparently, Scar’s actions aren’t strong enough to speak for themselves.)
Besides the obvious contrivance of this arbitrary decision, Oscar’s mother just happens to die, leaving him orphaned, basically copying every Disney plot from Bambi to The Lion King.
All the clever editing and narrative guesswork leads to several decidedly tepid chimp-on-chimp gang wars. The filmmakers’ attempt to tell the inherently violent story of a chimpanzee territory war without breaking the G-rating means most of the film’s climactic scenes are just a lot of sweeping camera shots of rustling trees.
Amidst all this chaos is the film’s absolute worst attribute, narrator Tim Allen (Toy Story 3). Allen’s delivery is painfully forced, especially when he attempts to interpret any of the chimp’s deepest thoughts or describe a chimp battle.
As cheeky as Chimpanzee‘s structure is, it is certainly a visually arresting experience. Whether it’s close-up footage of a baby chimp suckling its mother’s teat or beautiful overhead shots of Tanzanian waterfalls and nut groves, there’s never a lack of good images.
Some of Chimpanzee‘s best images have nothing at all to do with chimps, most notably the numerous time-lapsed camera shots, which include a giant spider spinning its web and glowing fungus growing over the bark of a tree.
There are reasons to dislike Chimpanzee, but there’s no definitive reason to not see it. It’s a great looking documentary trying far too hard to tell a story that didn’t necessarily need any narration at all.
If the chimps knew what was going on, it’s safe to say audiences could have figured it out.
VERDICT: Weighed down by uninspired narration, Chimpanzee is worth a viewing for its visuals alone.
berman@umdbk.com
