MONKEY KINGDOM
Walt Disney Pictures (Disneynature Series)
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade: A-
Directors: Mark Linfield, co-director Alastair Fothergill
Screenwriter: Mark Linfield
Photographer: Martyn Colbeck, Gavin Thurston
Cast: Narrated by Tina Fey
Screened at: Regal E-Walk, NYC, 4/13/15
Opens: April 17, 2015
I’d like a dollar for every time a biology teacher someone in the U.S. told a high school class that “if you want to understand human behavior, just watch the animals in the jungle. Animals (other than we) behave in the same way that people do.” If you want to document this, you don’t have to spend $8,000 for a safari (excluding air fare to East Africa, or in this case Sri Lanka). Just take in “Monkey Kingdom,” which this early in the season could already be the front-runner for cinematography awards including Oscar. The photography is sumptuous, putting us closer to the monkey plus a few other species in support roles than we’d be if we spent the aforementioned $8,000. And what’s more you don’t have to worry about rain, intense heat, and attacks by crocs, cobras and leopards. Nor do you have to worry about being caught in a revolution in a U.S. theater. Not yet.
“Monkey Kingdom” is the eighth in the Disneynature series and should be considered right up there as the best of the group. Mark Linfield directs not simply a documentary that catches this and that picture of a cute simian. He rather puts us into a story, a tale (so to speak) of the title figures acting like human beings. They love to eat and will break open bags of potato chips when they visit the town. They plan coup d’états, challenging the leaders of the kingdom. They fight against invaders, retreating from the best rock in the forest when overwhelmed, then returning when they think they can recover the land. They even have a press rep, namely Tina Fey as narrator. They nurse their young, though they are not stuck with their babies for eighteen, twenty, thirty years. They are social creatures, traveling always in packs, and are not opposed to excommunicating one of their ilk for bad behavior or for flirting with the monarch’s mate. And they apparently had the good fortune not to evolve into human beings some tens of thousands of years ago or further back.
Like us, the monkeys have names, not necessarily the ones they’d have chosen for themselves: Raja for the king. Kumar for the flirtatious male. Maya, who has a baby out of nowhere since this is a G-rated picture. And sociologists in the audience will pay the strictest attention to the class structure. Upper class simians like Raja are, understandably enough, on the highest branches. The middle class macaques, who may aspire to the upper reaches but will never get there (no parallel with U.S. society intended), chill around the middle. And the lower orders spend a good part of the time on the ground. In the same way that we homo sapiens have pets, these monkeys adopt other critters, the most hilarious example occurring when a group circle about a stray dog and one monkey actually rides him.
The best segment of the movie, perhaps because it’s the one we can identify most closely with, finds the entire troupe invading the nearby town, having run out of jungle food. They peer cautiously around, and when they think no humans are watching, they snatch chips and fruit from the concessionaires. We here in the big city may think that’s cute, but the local merchants, being accustomed to the little thieves, yell and chase them away as though they were mangy hounds.
Time lapse photography, particularly of clouds moving swiftly, adds to the professionalism of the crew, and Harry Gregson-Williams’ music is apt. Andy Netley as editor probably went through a few hundred hours of film—taken over a period of years—to evoke the best examples of simian behavior. And Tina Fey as narrator is as funny as always despite being a disembodied voice.
A must-see, not only for the kiddies but for family members of all ages.
Rated G. 82 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story- A-
Acting – A
Technical – A
Overall – A-
