JUNGLE2JUNGLE
1/2
Dr T. White
Director: John Pasquin
Cast: Tim Allen, Martin Short, JoBeth Williams, Lolita Davidovich, Sam Huntington
Produced by: Walt Disney Productions
Running Time: 105
Rating: * 1/2
I wanted to like this movie. I really did. I mean, I really like Tim Allen's TV show, "Home Improvement", and I also liked him in THE SANTA CLAUSE. But about the best I can say for his latest, JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE, is that it is mildly amusing. Sometimes.
There is very little in this film that we haven't seen before or can't figure out at least five minutes before it happens. Here's the story: Michael Cromwell (Allen), an obnoxious New York commodities broker, goes to the Amazon to obtain a divorce from his wife, Patricia (JoBeth Williams), who (understandably) left him thirteen years earlier to serve as a doctor to a tribe of natives in South America. Once he gets there, Michael learns, to his horror, that he has a son (can't figure it out? His wife, unknown to either of them, was pregnant when she walked out). This son, Mimi-Siku (Sam Huntington), whose name means "cat piss" (ha ha! pretty funny, huh?), wants Dad to take him back to his village (New York City, of course) so he can bring back fire from the torch of the Statue of Liberty...so he can be a chief of his tribe someday. OK.
Despite Michael's reluctance, Mimi-Siku talks him into taking him to the Big Apple (there wouldn't be much of a movie if he didn't, right?). Once there, a huge problem is presented in the form of Michael's fiance, Charlotte (Lolita Davidovich), a superbitch fashion designer who has a cat that Mimi-Siku would love to eat. Charlotte and Mimi-Siku just don't get along (after all, he pees in her plants), and the friction between the two threatens to disrupt the upcoming wedding. A relatively pointless subplot involves a million dollars' worth of coffee beans sold to the Russian Mafia by Michael's ineffectual assistant, Richard Kempster (Martin Short); it seems the head of the head of said gang thinks he's been screwed by Michael and Richard, and seeks to separate them from their fingers.
So...will Michael and Mimi-Siku come to some sort of father-son, loving-type bonding-sort of relationship? Will Michael figure out what a shallow, self-centred bimbo his fiance really is? Will the Russian Mafia actually cut off the fingers of the errant coffee bean peddlars? Well, duh...it's pretty hard to figure out, right?
Of course, there's nothing really wrong with a movie being predictable; after all, most of them are. But a predictable movie should at least be entertaining in some way: funny, cool to look at, sexy....something. JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE just ain't got it. Sure there are a few funny bits, similar to those of "Home Improvement". But they don't add up to a coherent whole, a movie with some sense of progression and unity; they just don't amount to much but a bunch of silly bits.
So, to mildly amusing, we can add pretty stupid. And not even funny stupid, like, say, Jim Carrey movies, at which we laugh in spite of ourselves and our knowledge that what we are seeing and laughing at is, in fact, stupid. No, JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE is just plain garden variety stupid. Don't bother; watch "Home Improvement" instead.
THE FLYING INKPOT's RATING SYSTEM:
* Wait for the video.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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