Tarzan: The Pilot (2003) - Review

In the past one hundred years there have been many versions of Tarzan, from the big screen to the small one, but in 2003 the WB Network decided to update the Tarzan story to a modern setting with a whole new origin story, and with the added twist of making it part police proceduralThat is certainly an interesting idea, as is casting an Australian ex-Calvin Klein model in the title role, but the show only lasted eight episodes before being cancelled which begs the question, “Just how bad was it?” The show’s creator Eric Kripke, who would later go onto to create the long running show Supernatural, has made his feelings clear calling it, “A piece of crap.” But is it really that bad?

 The pilot begins with a very good cold open. Somewhere in New York City a half-naked man is tied to a table in some kind of lab, and he is surrounded by nervous men with guns. A man in a lab coat enters the room to “borrow” some blood from the bound man, but apparently the captive does not take it too well.

 

I’m betting his HMO will not cover this.

The man is of course Tarzan (Travis Fimmel), and he explodes out of the operating room in a bid to escape this high rise prison. I’ll certainly give the producers credit at least one thing, and that is for providing fight choreography that is bloody brilliant.  Travis Fimmel and the stunt team do fantastic work and of things wrong with this show the action scenes are not one of them. Tarzan flees to roof of this building, where he must take out even more security forces, before finally escaping. The last shot of the cold open is a stunning reveal that really hooks fans of Tarzan in.

 

The show’s chief villain is Greystoke, Tarzan’s family.

We are then introduced to Detective Jane Porter (Sarah Wayne Callies) who lives in a nice Manhattan apartment with her younger sister Nicki (Leighton Meester). Jane’s introduction gives me my first signs of foreboding; we first see her working out so that we can believe she could be a credible badass if needed, but then in the very next moment she’s showing her sister a news article about her boyfriend Detective Michael Foster (Johnny Messner) and dreaming about being as good as him. Feminism on television still needed a little work.

 

“Hey sis, isn’t my hunky boyfriend just the best?”

Said boyfriend is trying to catch this crazy arsonist known as The Inferno Killer (Kevin Durand), and even Jane’s partner, Detective Sam Sullivan (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.), is jealous of such a high profile case. Sam also thinks that this case, and an old case of his, could be connected. Their Captain (Gary Chalk) doesn’t have time for such silly speculations and assigns them to more suitable cases, like tracking down a pack of dogs that are terrorizing a neighbourhood. It’s while investigating this case of canine malfeasance that Jane first encounters Tarzan. They discover this half naked guy in an alley eating stolen food with a bunch of dogs, and Jane’s immediate reaction is to chase after and attempt to arrest this dude. (The NYPD are apparently harsh on the homeless problem as that’s what Tarzan looked like at a glance) When he escapes up the side of a building with the agility of a monkey she realizes this is no ordinary hobo.

 

He’s an incredibly dreamy looking hobo.

Jane strains to run him down but when she tries to attempt a jump between buildings to follow him she doesn’t quite make it, and Tarzan has to come back to rescue her, pulling her up with just one hand. Instead of a thank you Jane pulls out her gun and tells him, “You are under arrest.” Then she faints. *sigh* Just ten minutes in and Jane is certainly not showing us that she is any kind of supercop. Would any cop show out there, with a male in this role, have had him faint like this? Unless it was for some comic relief moment the answer is definitely no. In the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films Jane was most definitely from the damsel in distress school of femininity, but why would a show that is updating the story, and making Jane a police detective, go in that direction? In the Tarzan books by Burroughs Jane eventually became a badass in her own right, so why do so many adaptations fail to make her a strong independent character. And what does this show’s Tarzan do when faced with an unconscious and attractive woman?

 

He gropes her.

What in the bloody hell? This does not make me sympathetic to whatever plight is facing this Tarzan.  Feeling up an unconscious woman is not cool in anyone’s book. It is not helped by the fact that throughout this episode he is constantly petting or smelling her hair as if personal space isn’t something he is familiar with. And sure you are all saying, “But Mike, he was raised in the jungle and knows no better!” And you’d be right, but my problem is not with Tarzan’s action but with Jane’s. She just gets a dreamy faraway look in her eyes instead of slapping the creep like any self-respecting person would do.

 

“Your actions normally would result in a knee to the groin, but you’re just too damn hunky.”

Before Jane can embarrass herself further a black helicopter arrives, a group of Greystoke security goons rappel down, Tarzan is shot with a tranq, and then taken away. A dropped locket, containing a picture of John Clayton, his wife and little boy leads her to Greystoke Industries and its powerful CEO Richard Clayton (Mitch Pileggi). Jane learns from Richard that years ago his brother, and head of Greystoke Industries, disappeared while on a photo safari with his family while they were flying across the Congo. Years later Richard and his people discovered the crashed plane, but also nearby was their surprisingly not dead son John, now all grown up, mentally unstable and mute. Richard takes Jane to see John/Tarzan but he is a bit shocked when the supposedly mute man leaps up and says, “Hello.”

 

"Well, Jane have the lambs stopped screaming?"

Later Tarzan once again escapes his uncle’s penthouse mansion (he should really look into better security), and then he crashes a romantic dinner date between Jane and her detective boyfriend. Now how did he find her in amongst all the buildings in New York City you may ask, well as much as I can tell he has some kind of “Spider-Sense” or I guess "Jane-Sense" would be more accurate.

 

Everyone’s friendly neighbourhood Ape-Man.

Jane and Tarzan take a walk through Central Park and when she asks how Tarzan found her his response is, “I hunt. I hunted for you.” And for some reason that is considered romantic and not incredibly creepy. This is my biggest problem with this pilot; they rush the romance element way to fast. Travis Fimmel and Sarah Wayne Callies (who we now know as Lori from The Walking Dead) do have excellent chemistry together, but their love story is treated almost like a psychic bond, and for me that makes it infinitely less interesting. Though to be fair their psychic bond is the only real way to explain how when Jane cries out in terror Tarzan can hear from inside a jail cell across town. As mentioned the action sequences are excellent, and when Tarzan must take on the Inferno Killer it’s a real showstopper, but Jane herself just gets knocked down and pinned beneath a shelving unit.

 

What are the chances of an elephant stampede rescue?

As pilots go it’s got a lot going for it. Great action, a mystery to solve, and a new mythology to the Tarzan story, all the trimmings for good television, and it does open up several interesting questions. What nefarious reasons does Richard Clayton have for hunting down his nephew and keeping him locked away? Will Jane dump her fiancée for this jungle dreamboat? Can Tarzan make a home for himself in the concrete jungle? So join me over the next eight weeks as I take a look at these eight episodes of a series forgotten by most, or at least Eric Kripke wishes were forgotten by most.

 

Tarzan and Jane together again for the first time.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969) – Review

Today we pretty much take our computers for granted, but that was certainly not the case back in the sixties when the typical computer took up an entire floor of an office building.  In 1969 computer science was the equivalent of alchemy to the average person, the internet wasn’t even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye, and in movies they were truly magical beings with infinite power and knowledge. Enter Disney Studios and their fictional Medfield College to show us the truly wonderful world of computers.

Long before John Carpenter turned Kurt Russell into an action hero with his film Escape From New York Russell was consider a light comic actor, appearing in numerous televisions shows, and was for a time a contract player at Disney. This brings us to Dexter Reilly and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, the first in the Dexter Reilly series for Disney Studios.

 

This fresh face will one day be Snake Plisken.

The movie begins at Medfield College, which first appeared in Disney’s The Absent Minded Professor, where we are introduced to Dean Higgins (Joe Flynn) who is trying to explain to Professor Quigley (William Schallert) why the cash strapped college cannot afford to buy a computer. Eavesdropping on this meeting are a group of misfit students that Dean Higgins refers to as “deadwood” and the leaders of that group are Dexter Reilly (Kurt Russell), Pete Oatzel (Frank Webb), Annie Hannah (Debbie Paine) and Richard Schuyler (Michael McGreevey). Due to their poor academic performances many of this group are put on probation. Basically this was Animal House Pre-Belushi. The kids feel bad that Quigley isn’t going to get the computer lab he wanted, but Dexter has a brilliant idea on how they can get a computer.  Turns out he use to work as a cleaner in a building owned by local wealthy businessman A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero), and he’s sure he could get him to donate the necessary money for a computer. What they don’t know is that A.J. Arno is also the head of large illegal gambling ring.

 

He’s being played by The Joker so they should have been a little suspicious.

Mister Arno is sorry to tell the kids that he already pledged a $20,000 donation to Medfield College so he’s unable to give more money for a computer, but after the kids leave he comes up with a way for him to save some money and still keep up his good guy image by donating one of his old computers to the school instead of giving the $20,000 dollar pledge. The kids are excited about the “new” computer, and Professor Quigley tells them all about how some day computers will do everything for you.

 

I like the “Use Caution” sign.  It's a nice touch.

During a demonstration a part in the logic activator circuit of the computer blows and Dexter volunteers to drive over to Central Electronics to get the replacement. When he returns to the computer lab later that night he doesn’t seem concerned that an open window has let rain cover the lab floor. I know he’s a student on academic probation but how dumb do you have to be to not know that water and electronics do not go well together. He stupidly slides in the activator while standing in a puddle of water, and he receives an incredible electrical jolt. And that kids is how you can turn your brain into a living computer. The next day when Dexter takes the State Classification test he finishes it in less than four minutes, and with a perfect score. Dean Higgins is sure the boy cheated, but Quigley is positive something else is going on and has Dexter checked out by a doctor. The results are surprising.

 

I’m pretty sure the filmmakers understood neither computers nor brains.

Once everyone has come to grips with the fact that Dexter Reilly now has a computer brain, which every does remarkably fast, he becomes an instant celebrity. He gets the key to the city, has dinner at the White House, and addresses the United Nations. All this fame goes straight to Dexter's computer filled brain, and his ego starts to explode. He becomes so caught up in his self-importance that he starts blowing off his old friends. But when a day hanging out with A.J. Arno and his assistant/goon Chillie Walsh (Richard Bakalyan) lands him in jail, due to an illegal gambling parlor that he and Chillie were visiting when it got raided, it’s his friends that bail him out. So Dexter learns that that friendship is more important than money, and fame. Dean Higgins of course is still all about the money, and he really wants the $100,000 cash prize for the College Knowledge Quiz Program, but Dexter only agrees to help if his friends can be on the team.

 

Three idiots and a literal computer genius.

Problems arise when one of the questions asked during the program triggers Reilly into unknowingly spouting out details of Arno's gambling ring on live television. And that folks is why you do not donate a computer that was formally used for your criminal activities.  This is bad news for Arno so that night Dexter is abducted by Chillie Walsh and taken to an abandoned house outside of town.  It’s up to the whole gang to free Dexter from the mobsters clutches before he’s weighted down and sunk to the bottom of a nearby lake.

 

Wackiness ensues.

This is the classic family entertainment that one could expect from Disney at the time; it didn’t have to make sense it just had to be fun. As long as at some point there was a car chase, someone in the establishment was made fun of, and the villain gets eggs, oil, paint or what have you splattered all over them, they considered it a job well done.

 

Mission accomplished.

Will Dexter and friends make it to the College Knowledge quiz show in time to win the $100,000 prize? Can A.J. Arno and Chillie stay one step ahead of the law? Does being dropped on his head while escaping the crooks affect Dexter’s computer mind? All these questions and more are answered in this fancifully fun fantasy/science fiction flick.

 

"Could you please answer that in the form of a question?"

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was directed by Robert Butler, a man mostly known for television work, so it’s not surprising that this movie has a very “movie of the week” feel to it, and I’m betting it getting a theatrical release was a decision made after production got underway. This zany type of Disney comedy was never popular with the critics, but they made huge box office so it’s no surprise that we got two follow up Dexter Reilly movies; Now You See Him Now You Don't and The Strongest Man in the World.  All three are well worth checking out.

The Good Dinosaur (2015) – Review

The question most likely asked by many a viewer of this film would be, “Just who was Pixar's target audience?” As a studio Pixar has easily one of the best track records, from Toy Story to Inside Out they rarely let a person down (my exception is Cars as I can’t get behind a Doc Hollywood rip-off that has no intrinsic logic to its world), but with The Good Dinosaur I’m really not sure what they were shooting for.

The movies basic premise is interesting enough, “What if the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs missed the Earth?” After the near miss we jump ahead a few million years to find that dinosaurs have evolved to be farmers and cowboys. We first meet two Apatosaurus named Henry (Jeffrey Wright) and Ida (Frances McDormand) who we see run a nice little farmstead, but this leads to my first question is, “How the Hell do you farm if you bloody well don’t have thumbs?” These dinosaurs did not evolve physically just mentally, and that is not how evolution works. And sure, you are all thinking, “But Mike, this is a kid’s movie, cut them some slack.” And I call bullshit, a kid’s movie doesn’t equal dumb and lazy. Even The Flintstones, which stuck man and dinosaurs together, never had Dino making a fence that required constructing ropes and tying off the posts.

 

Do you know what’s missing from that shot? Fred and Barney that’s what.

The couple give birth to three children: Libby (Maleah Padilla), Buck (Marcus Scribner), and the runt Arlo (Raymond Ochoa). The two stronger children quickly prove their worth to the family but poor timid Arlo is practically afraid of everything, even the chickens they raise. Next question, “Why are herbivores raising chickens?” Aside from seeing Arlo try and fail to feed them we don’t find out what this family does with them.

 

I certainly wouldn’t eat any eggs that came out of that thing.

Henry is confident that Arlo will eventually find his place, and even gives him the important job of catching and killing whatever critter is sneaking into their grain silo and eating their food. One day Arlo manages to capture a feral caveboy (Jack Bright) in a trap, but he is too reluctant to kill him, and instead sets him free. Henry, with parental disgust, drags the poor kid out into a storm to track down the varmint, and this is when we get the standard “Disney Dead Parent” moment. Henry is swept away and killed by a flash flood much in the way Mufasa was by the herd of wildebeests in The Lion King.

 

“I'm totally blaming my evil uncle for this.”

When Arlo discovers the caveboy back in the silo the very next day, and as he blames the kid for the death of his father, he chases the little guy to finish the job his dead dad had given him.  Arlo's track record of failure remains consistent as they both end up in the raging river which takes them far from home. Will these two put aside their differences and work together to find home? Will Arlo's animosity turn to friendship?  If you have to ask these questions you’ve probably never seen a movie before, but the makers of this film clearly have, and by having seen I mean they ripped off elements from The Land Before Time, Ice Age, Old Yeller, The Lion King, Finding Nemo, and The Incredible Journey. The premise of this movie is simply there to disguise worn out plots that even the youngest child will have most likely seen before.

 

Though the heroes’ drug trip may be new to them.

Which brings us back to our initial question, “Just who is the intended audience?” The dad’s traumatic death and the constant threat of our little heroes getting eaten could send little ones into tears, while the complete antiseptic action (T-Rex’s attacks result in chomping and flinging of bodies, but no blood) will leave adults and even most kids bored. The film also lacks much in the humor department, I chuckled maybe once in the film’s entire running time, and aside from the cute feral caveboy I never really got invested in any of the characters, especially Arlo. Pixar is clearly trying to tap into the “Coming of Age” element of Finding Nemo, but I found an Apatosaurus afraid of beetles to be a poor replacement for plucky Nemo and his little fin.

 

“Oh my god, it’s coming right at me!”

The film is certainly gorgeous to look at, the CGI are environments are practically photorealistic, which some may find jarring when a stylized kid friendly cartoon dinosaur romps through them. Disney made an excellent CGI film back in 2000 called Dinosaur, but there the environs matched the denizens. Pixar clearly went for the cartoonier look to make the dinosaurs more “kid friendly” and easily made into plush toys.

 

“My action feature will be to cower.”

Pixar does of course know how to push all the right emotional buttons as Arlo and the caveboy, who he names Spot, eventually bond over their travails, and when certain decisions have to be made I’ll admit to welling up with a tear or two, but then again I’m a pretty soft touch for that kind of manipulations. Most kids will have asked to leave the theatre long before the emotional heart of the movie arrives.

 

A dinosaur and his boy, a tale as old as time.

So overall I found the premise intriguing, but the execution lazy, the action to scary for kiddies but too lame for adults, and the humor almost nonexistent.   Clearly a lot of work went into this I only wish they'd spent a little more time on the story structure, and gave me a protagonist I could care about, and less on how real the trees look.  There is a lot of heart towards the end of the film (if you can make it that far), which all said and done just makes this a hard film to recommend. So I'd say wait for it on Home Video.

 

Though I do simply love Spot.

Ash vs Evil Dead: Season One – Review

Is there anything more entertaining than seeing Bruce Campbell getting the crapped kicked out of him?  I'm not sure, but thirty years after the original Evil Dead hit theaters we have a television series that does its best to answer that question.  Now pain is integral to comedy, whether it be physical or emotional, but getting the balance right is the secret to really good comedy, and Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell are undisputed kings of getting the blend just right.

Back in 1981 audiences were shocked at the level of gore and horror in Sam Raimi’s low budget film Evil Dead, but then in 1987 Raimi released a sequel with even more gore, but with complete overhaul of tone. Evil Dead II was a brilliant comedy as well as a horror film, mixing elements from The Three Stooges and the Grand Guignol.  In that prequel/sequel Raimi and Bruce Campbell created a masterpiece of the dark comedy. Army of Darkness, the third entry, reigned in the gore but then expanded the character of Ash’s bravado nature. Then in 2013 we got a remake of the original that was surprisingly good, but it in keeping true to that first film it did not have the comic element fans of the series had grown to love. Enter the Starz Network and its back to gore fueled comic romp we’ve all been waiting for.

 

“I’m back, baby.”

Thirty years have passed since Ash (Bruce Campbell) first battled the Evil Dead and we now find him living in a trailer park, working at Value Stop (I’m assuming it’s not S-Mart because Universal still owns Army of Darkness, so this series cannot reference that movie), and trying to score with the local ladies. Ash does surprisingly well at this, and one must chock that up to his insane charismatic charm. He may be a pompous braggart, so full of hot air he could be a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but he is an exceptional likable braggart. Unfortunately when one of his conquests asks him to read some poetry the only book he has on hand is the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, the book of the dead. That element is this show’s hardest thing to swallow, and this is series where a hardware store clock can construct a robotic hand, but It’s hard to believe that Ash would not only still have the Necronomicon but that he’d read from it to impress a chick.

 

“If only I’d had a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey handy.”

Sure he’s was half out of his gourd on drugs at the time but it could have worked just as easily if the girl had found it while he was passed out, and then she read it on her own. For me this scene pushed Ash from the lovable idiot end of the spectrum to the fucking moron end. Regardless of the logic of this scene this does get the show’s premise moving along because once evil stalks the land Ash must do battle with it, but unlike in the movie the initial attack isn’t on Ash but rather on innocents in the surrounding area. Enter Michigan State Trooper Amanda Fisher (Jill Marie Jones) who, upon responding to what was assumed to be a domestic abuse situation, find herself facing off against deadites.

 

Exactly why isn’t she shooting?

So Fisher’s partner is killed and she is put on administrative leave after reporting the crazy shit she saw, but she won’t be sidelined and her hunt for the truth will pull her into Ash’s circle. Meanwhile Ash, having failed to escape town with his paycheque, teams up with fellow Value Stop employees Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana Delorenzo) who agree to help Ash find a way to destroy the book. So Ash suits up, dons his signature chainsaw and shotgun, and the trio set out face evil.

 

Ash seen here facing off against evil

This is a brilliantly fun show, but if you have a squeamish side or a weak stomach you may want to give it a pass. People are decapitated, eyes gouged out, limbs lopped off in sprays of blood, and that’s just in the first episode. Gallons upon gallons of blood fly throughout this ten episode season and I can’t see any fan of the Evil Dead movies being disappointed. Special shout-out to Mimi Rogers, who plays Kelly’s mom and whose deadite transformation is fantastic as is her awesome carnage filled battle with Ash.

 

Is this what happens when you divorce Tom Cruise?

The final crucial element to the season is in the character of Ruby (Lucy Lawless). She claims to be the daughter of Professor Raymond and Henrietta Knowby who we met back in Evil Dead 2, and she teams up with Fisher to track down and kill Ash. That Fisher trusts a woman who is using Ash’s severed possessed hand as a GPS unit shows what strain this police officer must be under.

 

Also don’t trust some who looks that badass at 47 years of age.

Now not every episode hits it out of the park, the crew take a pit stop to see Pablo’s uncle to help exorcise a demon and it’s mostly treading water story wise, and the ending cliff-hanger was a tad weak, but overall there is something good in each and every one of the shows first ten episodes to keep most fans happy. Though any qualms a fan could possibly have about this show will be abated when Ash finally returns to the cabin where it all started. The season finale showdown between our heroes and the Dark Ones is a gore filled nightmare that will have the stoutest viewer cringing and peeking through their fingers.

 

It even has some gruesome nods to the 2013 remake.

Ash vs Evil Dead was renewed for a second season, three days before it even premiered, so we can all look forward to more adventures with one of the world’s unlikeliest heroes. So keep your Kandarian Dagger handy and sit back and enjoy the ride in everyone’s favorite yellow Oldsmobile Delta 88.

 

Book your room today.

Wolfen (1981) – Review

1981 was certainly the Year of the Wolf. We got John Landis’s amazing An American Werewolf in London and Joe Dante’s equally excellent The Howling, but there was a third wolf film out that year that many people have forgotten called Wolfen.  What people didn’t know, and the studio did their best marketing spin to keep it that way, was that Wolfen was not a werewolf movie like the previous two. At no point in this film do we see anybody’s body parts stretch or shift and grow an abundant amount of hair, and though this film is classified as a horror/crime/thriller the horror element is very, very small.

 What this film is truly about is man’s hubris towards the environment and how it will eventually bite him in the ass, and in this case quite literally. Long before Global Warming became a hot button topic many people cried out against man’s treatment of the natural world, and using film or television to promote environmental political agendas was certainly nothing new, and one of the best ways to sneak that stuff to the masses was to slip it into a genre movie. So in this outing we have a former NYPD Captain Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney) yanked out of retirement by his gruff boss (Dick O'Neill) to investigate a particular gruesome crime; Christopher Van der Veer (Max M. Brown), a powerful real estate magnate, and his lovely wife (Anne Marie Pohtamo) are horrible torn apart in Battery Park. Their chauffeur/bodyguard is also found dead, his hand severed yet still holding his unfired gun.

 

He’s either being stalked by a Wolfen or The Predator.

The Wolfen-Vision is one of my bigger problems with the film, because for most of the films 114 minute running time we do not see our title creature, instead we get Evil Dead-Cam tracking shots that go on for fucking ever. Now keeping your creature’s appearances limited can be very effective, just look at how well that worked for Spielberg’s Jaws, but in the case of Wolfen we get way too many of these thermo-cam POV shots before even knowing what the creature is supposed to be. In Jaws even if you don’t see the shark we all know what a shark is and how terrifying they are, but what the hell is a Wolfen? This is not helped when we eventually see them and they look just like normal wolves.

 

“Oh, who’s a good boy?”

I’m not saying wolves aren’t scary, if I was alone in the woods with them, and I wasn’t Liam Neeson, I’d be terrified too.  But the simple fact is that wolves are really beautiful animals and plucking them into an urban environment takes much of their power away. It’s not until the third act that we get the supernatural element of these creatures explained, but what we learn wasn't worth the wait.

Note: Back when I first saw this film I assumed they were invisible as that is really the only way to explain them wandering around New York City completely unnoticed, but that turned out not to be the case.  They can apparently ghost out and teleport.

During his investigation Captain Dewey Wilson, who gets partnered up with criminal psychologist Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora), first suspects that Native American militant member Eddie Holt (Edward James Olmos) is involved, and it’s while interviewing him up on the high steel of a suspension bridge that the first mention of shape-shifting occurs, totally getting our hopes up. Holt tells Dewey that he can turn into many types of animal including wolves and eagles, and even tells Dewey to go jump off the bridge and flap his arms, offering the tip, “It’s all in the head.” When Dewey tails Holt that night he finds him naked at the beach acting like a wolf, but just when Dewey is going to shoot the apparently “Crazy Indian” before he can pounce on him Eddie stops cold and says, “Dewey, I told you man, it’s all in your head.” Eddie Holt was totally fucking with him. This is one of my favorite moments in the movie as it’s nice to see the “Wise Native American” having fun with the stupid white guy.

 

Also you get to see young Commander Adama running around naked.

Unfortunately this moment is harmed by two things; one being that Edward James Olmos is of Mexican descent and not a Native America, but secondly and more damagingly is that later the Wolfen are revealed to actually be magical Native American bullshit. I would have been much happier if the whole Native America thing had just been another red herring like the terrorist angle that most the bigwigs in the movie believed it to be. Instead we get a scene where, after his friend Whittington (Gregory Hines) is killed while trying to help hunt the wolves, Dewey staggers to a bar frequented by Native Americans and is told by Holt that the Wolfen are wolf-spirits that combined with some of the Native Americans during the genocide caused by White Man’s arrival in the New World, and that they now live off the forgotten people of the world, with the occasional murder to protect their hunting grounds.

 

Gregory Hines should have known better than to be a black man in a horror film.

So we learn that Christopher Van der Veer was targeted because he was demolishing the slums that the Wolfen hunted in for his urban renewal project. This of course relies on us buying wolves seeing a man in a suit using a silver shovel during a “Ground Breaking” photo op to be the guy they need to kill to save their home. The Wolfen even start targeted people who are investigating the deaths. Ferguson (Tom Noonan), a zoologist that Dewey and Whittington go to so that he can identify animal hairs found at the scene of the crime, is slaughtered by the Wolfen. This happens after we learn he loves wolves, hates how they were hunted to near extinction, and doesn’t believe they could be the culprits.

 

So he was killed by the Wolfen because they hate sympathy?

Setting aside the title monsters not making any sense we now look to the film’s bigger problem and that would be its pacing. This movie trundles along like the slowest police procedural in the history of film, and when I heard that Michael Wadleigh’s cut of the movie, before his removal from the film in post-production, was over four and a half hours, my mind reeled in wonderment as to what the hell else he shot. A year later Larry Cohen would release Q: The Winged Serpent a film with very similar themes; it has police investigating a series of brutal killings that turn out to be done by a creature, but he managed to tell that story in 93 minutes. Not to mention the fact that the movie ends with them facing off against what is basically a dragon and not a bunch of wolves that have been living off the homeless.

 

And like pretending to be Michael Myers.

Michael Wadleigh's only other screen credit is the 1970 Woodstock documentary and one wonders why the hell he was hired to helm a monster movie, but its certainly clear why he never directed another movie. The only thing this movie has going for it is the cast as across the board every part in this movie is handled really well, even non Native America Edward James Olmos is fine. Maybe if he’d stay closer to Whitley Strieber’s book, which had no mysticism at all, we may have got a better movie. In 1983 Tony Scott would tackle Whitley Strieber’s book The Hunger and by staying truer to the source material he gave us a film that was much better adaptation of Strieber’s work than Wolfen was.  I will say this though, Wolfen had a really nice tag line.

"They can hear a cloud pass overhead, the rhythm of your blood. They can track you by yesterday's shadow. They can tear the scream from your throat. Wolfen. There is no defense."

Tarzan (1999) - Review

It’s hard to believe that this is the first big screen attempt at doing the Tarzan story in animation, because if any story lent itself to that medium it would be Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Only a few Tarzan movies have tackled the origin story because depicting a child growing up with apes is a tricky thing to pull off.  In Greystoke:The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes the filmmakers went for a realistic approach, and thus we got a fairly dialogue free first half of the movie, but in the book the Great Apes who raised Tarzan had a language of their own.  Now in literary form that is easy enough to depict while in a movie that would involve guys in apes suits talking which can easily come across as rather goofy looking, but in animation talking animals is nothing new. So the idea of a Disney animated movie of this classic tale is not so much perfect as it is about damn time.

 But do they get the story right or is this just another one of Disney’s many whitewashings of classic tales such as we got with the likes of Hercules and The Hunchback of Notre Dame? That is a tough question to answer, and director’s Kevin Lima and Chris Buck do get a lot right and this really is a decent movie, but it’s just a shame they didn’t have more faith in the original Burroughs’ book to make it a truly great adaptation. The movie opens with a burning shipwreck with the only survivors being an English couple and their infant son. The couple are never named so the fact that Tarzan is really John Clayton, an heir to the Greystoke title, is never addressed making the whole "lord" of the apes thing moot. And once again in the book they were marooned not shipwrecked, as this part of the origin story was handled the same way in Greystoke I’m betting this change was more about saving screen time than just an arbitrary decision.

 

“Don’t worry dear, my mutton chops will save us.”

Where this movie diverges greatly from the book is in the handling of the ape leader Kerchak (Lance Henriksen). In the book he is the reason Kala (Glenn Close) loses her baby, she drops her child while being chased by the raging bastard, which then leads to her replacing her loss with that of the baby Tarzan. The fact that Kerchak is the one who killed Tarzan’s father in the book is also nixed here, now his parents are killed off screen by the leopard Sabor, who has also been turned into the killer of Kala’s child as well. This movie could be considered a smear campaign against leopards.  In this movie Kerchak is a gruff leader who does not accept Tarzan as one of their own, but he certainly is not the murderous beast that Tarzan must kill to become Lord of the Apes as depicted in the book.

 

“King Kong has nothing on me!”

Interesting to note is that this is the first Tarzan movie where he is shown being raised by Gorillas. Mostly in the past it’s just been dudes in ape suits. In the books Tarzan is part of a group of Great Apes, a mythical missing link that Burroughs created, and which makes a child surviving among them a tad more believable. So without Kerchak as the villain who will be Tarzan’s main antagonist this time round? Tarzan (Tony Goldwyn) does face off against Sabor, who he slays before it can kill Kerchak, but the real villain of this piece is Clayton (Brian Blessed), a hunter hired by Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (Nigel Hawthorne) to help locate some gorillas for Porter and his daughter Jane (Minnie Driver) to study. Why the writers decided to use Tarzan’s family name for that of the chief villain is beyond me. In the book there was a William Clayton, who was the unwitting usurper of the ape man's ancestral English estate, but aside from being a romantic threat to his and Jane’s eventually happiness, he really wasn’t much of a villain. In this case Clayton comes from a long line of stock Big White Hunters that have plagued Tarzan through countless adventures.

 

“If it bleeds we can kill it.”

For some strange reason Jane is also British and not American as she is in the book, but as Minnie Driver is excellent in this part I will certainly let that one slide. The relationship between Tarzan and Jane is really well done here, and the filmmakers capture the chemistry perfectly between this noble savage and the spunky damsel in distress. When Jane meets Tarzan there is the initial, “Me Tarzan, you Jane” shtick, but he quickly learns English so we aren't stuck with him grunting at her all the time.

 

Though he never does learn about personal space.

The films central theme is about family. Where does Tarzan really fit in? Kerchak makes it abundantly clear that he is not considered to be one of the his family, despite Kala’s assurance that they both share the same beating heart, but could Tarzan survive in the “civilized” world if he went back to live with Jane? Finding out that he is not a freakish looking ape, but a man born of human parents, rocks Tarzan’s world to its very foundation, and he feels betrayed by Kala for not telling him about his birth parents. When he is forced to choose between worlds he picks Jane's, and why not as no other ape has seemed interested in dating him.   This also makes Tarzan vulnerable which allows Clayton just the right motivation to trick Tarzan into betraying his family. Turns out Clayton was only using the Porters to locate gorillas so that he could capture and sell them for 300 pounds sterling each.

 

Lot of betrayal going on in this movie.

Tarzan’s best friends Terk (Rosie O’Donell) and Tantor (Wayne Knight) stage a rescue, we won’t bother questioning how an elephant can scale the thirty foot side of a freighter, and Tarzan races off to save his family. I must say I did smile when Tarzan arrived at the head of an elephant stampede (which is Tarzan's rescue options one through ten), and his duel with Clayton is pretty intense, but the folks at Disney refrain from letting Tarzan actually kill anyone, and so Clayton has to "accidentally" kill himself by cutting the wrong vine and getting hung.

 

Still a pretty gruesome death for a Disney film.

I do understand this is a movie's target audience is children, and that there was no way we were going to get the brutal and cunning savage that Burroughs created way back in 1912, but what Disney did nail so beautifully was on how Tarzan travels through the jungle. With the use of the “Deep Canvas,” the process which allows 2D hand-drawn characters to exist seamlessly in a fully 3D environment, we finally get glimpse as to how Tarzan traveled through jungle as I’m sure Burroughs imagined it. In most movies Tarzan is seen mostly going from tree to tree via a series of strategically placed vines, which if you’ve ever been in a deep forest you'd know that not only isn’t it practical it’s not at all safe, but in this movie he is almost surfing through the branches like an extreme sports athlete.

 

“Watch out for that tree!”

I cannot understate how gorgeous these sequences are, for me these moments of pure jungle running joy are the highlight of the film, and if we had more of this breathtaking animation, and less “comedy” moments with Rosie O’Donnell’s ape atrocity Terk, the movie would be the better for it. Seriously, who thought an ape jamboree musical number was a good idea?

 

Forgive them Mrs. Potts, they know not what they do.

Disney’s Tarzan isn’t a traditional animated musical, aside from Terk’s musical masterpiece “Trashin’ the Camp” no one breaks into song, but the movie does have a full musical song list provided by Phil Collins. Now I like Phil Collins quite a bit, and I’d say most the songs in this movie are rather good, I’m just not sold on them being all the right tonally for a pulp adventure story. Most of the numbers are of a low percussion beat that play up the drama of the situation such as “Two Worlds” and “You’ll Be in My Heart” and they do work really well for their intended purposes, but much of the sense of adventure is missing from this score. As this is a movie about a dude who was raised by apes, runs through the jungle mostly naked, and hooks up with a cute girl, I think they could have lightened up a touch on the songs. Or maybe they could have left the songs out entirely and just given us a rousing Max Steiner type score.

 

Trivia Note: Tarzan's jungle cry was provided by Brian Blessed.

So no, this isn’t the faithful adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs that some of us have been wishing for, but damn it is still a fun film to watch. I may question a few of their story choices, but as they were making a family friendly animated movie I understand why most of them were made. The central theme of family is handled so well and makes me forgive them not killing off Kala as was done in the book. Her relationship with Tarzan is more integral to this film’s story than the arrival of Jane. This movie is about a mother and son dealing with heavy issues of identity and feelings of belonging. Jane is just some British chippie come to take her son away.

 

A gorilla would make for a very dangerous mother-in-law.

We may never see a Tarzan exactly the way Burroughs described him, and I seriously doubt we ever will, but as long filmmakers continue to gives us entertaining romps with everyone’s favorite jungle lord I will be a happy camper.

Final Thoughts:

• Tarzan in the film develops tool building skills all on his own; making a bone knife and a spear to fight off his adversaries. Book Tarzan found his father’s knife and that is what gave him the edge over many of the animals, and he wasn’t adverse to stealing weapons from the local natives.
• Speaking of which this movie steers well clear of racism by not having any natives at all.
• Sabor the leopard is actually a jaguar if you go by the markings, and thus not indigenous to Africa, but as Tarzan fought lions in the books, and they are not know for jungle living, we will give this one a pass.
• Clayton is the standard movie villain who can fire repeatedly without re-loading, even when only armed with a double barreled shotgun.
• This is not Glenn Close’s first time dubbing a voice in a Tarzan film, she was hired to dub over the voice of Andie MacDowell’s Jane in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.
• Somehow the Kerchak, the leader of the apes, is fooled by Tantor and Terk dressed as Professor Porter and Jane.

 

Are gorillas known for having poor eyesight?