Going Ape! (1981)

Okay, judging from your blank stare and slack jaw, I'm going out on a limb here and guessing you've never heard tell of this title, am I right?

Knew it.

Small wonder: unless you were one of those select few who caught it in theaters originally or when they showed it on an endless loop on HBO in the Eighties, you wouldn't have seen this movie. In fact, most people my age that I mention this one to don't even so much as remember this movie.

And do you know why? Because this is one of those niche films that is made for a very specific market. A very very specific market, in fact. To tell you the truth, I only know of three movies total in this particular niche. Maybe four.

Unlike sci-fi and rom-com, however, this is more specialized a segment of movie-goers than you might think. They're not the kind who wear their preferences on their sleeve, necessarily, but they do go see this kind of movie when it's there.

What kind? Oh, it's a comedy alright, but it's a special kind of comedy, though - a comedy with orangutans.

You know: orangutans. Those orange-haired apes with kinda-bald-looking heads and bad teeth. Those things, yeah. Well, believe it or not, someone thought it would be a good idea to center an entire movie around these citrus-hued primates and make them the entire focal point of their work. It may work for a Tarzan movie or something like that, but this is NOT a Tarzan movie we're talking about today.

And neither would Cheetah have anything to do with something as bad as this film. In fact, this is one of the lesser works in a genre I will hereby dub Orangsploitation.

...I do think I'm the first one to coin that phrase, so look out, patent office...

See, there was an orangutan who played part of a chauffeur in Cannonball Run II (another review for another time), and we can't forget Clyde, the right-turn punching, finger-flipping primate in Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can. Of course one should remember the performances of those banana-eaters in these movies did have the luxury of being able to fall back on Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds, as well as a cast of thous...well, a cast of dozens, anyway. In other words, the orangutans weren't being counted on to carry the whole show; they were just hairy orange filler.

However (and there's always a "however" in these cases), in the matter of Going Ape!, the orangutans ARE the movie. And while they may provide 15-20 minutes worth of passing distraction between set changes for Siegfried and Roy, a ninety-minute-or-so movie is a different proposition altogether.

And in this corner, your plot: After his passing, eccentric circus owner Max Sabatini bequeaths to his son, Foster, (Tony Danza) $5 million. There is, of course, a condition: Foster must keep and care for three of his dad's prized orangutans for at least five years. And along with them come circus high-wire artist Lazlo (Danny DeVito). These four zany additions are too much for Foster's live-in girlfriend Cynthia (Stacey Nelkin) whose disapproving feminist mother Fiona (Jessica Walter) encourages her to move out.

Also taking an interest in this inheritance is Zoological Society president Gridley (Joseph Maher), who stands to inherit if Foster can't follow through on his end. Just to make sure that the Society does claim the inheritance, Gridley dispatches Society member Brandon (Rick Hurst) to hire the assistance of some local mobsters headed by Joey (Art Metrano) to wreak havoc and create lots of unrelated slapstick violence. Of course, not quite the havoc and slapstick violence that the orangutans unleash.

Jeremy Joe Kronsberg both wrote and directed this little endeavor and while his is not one of those sparkling names in comedy one utters in the same breath as Preston Sturges or even John Hughes, there is a reason for that. His static, flat direction style suggests a TV director who gets his one shot at the big time and decided to go with an animal-based comedy. Why not; worked so well for Caroline Thompson's directing career when she gave us 1997's Buddy. At least SHE had her writing to fall back on....

Some of the scenes are downright embarrassing; Kronsberg's idea of a lightly humorous scene is having his two romantic leads talk in a park while huge monolithic stone heads loom behind them. Then there are innumerable times where things get spilled all over people or they get dumped in vats of liquid of some sort. Then there's the inevitable car chase scene where cars get totaled right and left. I think a fruit cart gets involved in there, too. If not, it's a shocker.

Tony Danza, huh? And Danny DeVito? See what happens when you have down time from a successful TV show? Both men were on top of their game on TV's "Taxi" series and probably decided a big-deal movie would help catapult them into the superstar stratosphere. Needless to say, this was more a Second Sight endeavor than anything, and "Who's The Boss" and many lucrative directing gigs were a-ways off. As a big dumb goof who makes a less-than-comfortable living selling pieces of his desk as splinters of Jesus' cross, Danza fails to do more than extend his Tony Banta character to big screen format. And as the mostly speechless Lazlo, DeVito reminds one of a borderline psychotic underwear-clad Harpo Marx - minus the harp and with a penchant for raw egg-eating. And some orangutans.

Stacy Nelkin, a few years away from losing her head in Halloween III, really doesn't do much more than act indignant, huffy and then lovey-dovey, not necessarily all in equal measure. Not her best hour.

And as her harridan mother, Walter really makes you forget that she was responsible for top performances in Lilith, Bye Bye Braverman and Play Misty for Me. Her stereotypical uptight disapproving potential mother-in-law thing would be entertaining if not for the fact that we've seen the same thing in several hundred thousand million billion trillion googleplex other movies.

The mobsters? Their purpose is to chase after the apes, try to kill them, spy on them and otherwise attempt to terrorize. What they succeed in is getting in a lot of car crashes, spilling stuff all over themselves, getting into arguments, shake around a painter's scaffold and do stereotypically Italian things like drink wine, eat pasta, speak like Chico Marx and be an insult to organized crime. It's a good thing the Mafia doesn't exist, I tell you, or these guys would all get wacked.

Looking at the rest of the cast, I recognize such comedy standbys as Metrano (more familiar from Police Academy movies and as Uncle Rico in "Joanie Loves Chachi"), Hurst (I remember him vividly as Cleaver from TV's "On The Rocks" and Deputy Cletus from "The Dukes of Hazzard") and Maher, whom I've seen before in the latter day Charles Bronson vehicle The Evil That Men Do. Maher plays it more or less straightforward here (the funniest thing he does is open a safe located in a boar's mounted head), so how well he compliments the plot here cannot really be said. He was probably used to better effect in Under The Rainbow, in fact. Man, when the day comes that a midget comedy beats out an orangutan comedy....

There are also the scant contributions of a couple of other recognizable bit parts; one is from "Hogan's Heroes" regular Leon Askin - remember him as General Burkhalter? - as a landlord in a sweaty wife-beater undershirt. Another is from Howard Mann (the yelling stage manager from Billy Crystal's ego-centric comedy Mr. Saturday Night) as a family lawyer who can really pack away the Alka-Seltzer. Neither one contribute anything more to the story than space filled, so it doesn't really matter whether they're funny or not. After all, they don't play orangutans, do they?

The orangutans. I almost forgot. What do they do while all the rest of this nonsense is going on? They grunt, chitter, dance to the radio, slap their own faces, slap other peoples' faces, blow raspberries, pinch people's bottoms, steal hats, flap their lips around, throw things, swing from the rafters, push people around, flash their ugly teeth, kiss people, push over bookcases, smash tables, and so on. I just thank GOD they all wore diapers.

Anyway, everything about Going Ape! is a big sloppy mess. Typical of a lot of other half-thought, slapstick-heavy stumble-fests like this. Others I remember from this same time period are Improper Channels, Utilities, Gas, Falling In Love Again, Cheaper To Keep Her, Chu Chu And The Philly Flash and a few others I've successfully blocked from my mind.

This is a clumsy, loud, stupid, ungainly exercise that, while not as bad a comedy as some, is still worse than most. And when it comes to Orangsploitation, Going Ape! is on the far bottom of the list, lower even than Cannonball Run II. Ouch; zing.

I imagine this thing's budget would've been mostly spent on securing the orangutans. Everything else...well, there had to have been some barter going on here and there. I don't imagine Hollywood contracts involve the use of orangutans and monkey diapers. You never know, however....

I don't recall "Entertainment Tonight" extolling the virtues of this back in the day, so I seriously doubt this would have been classified as a barn-burner of a success. If it did make back its budget, then color me surprised (and in this case, "surprised" would be Orangutan Orange).

The only thing I know for sure is that Jeremy Joe Kronsberg never directed another film after flinging this piece of poo, and while his writing consisted of this movie and Every Which Way But Loose (co-inky-dink?), he's all but disappeared. He does have one thing to his credit, however: on the Internet Movie Database, he is referred to as being "The Godfather of the Modern Ape Chase Movie".

So if there is one thing that Going Ape! does indeed do for anyone it's that it is keeping the dream alive for Orangsploitation fans everywhere.

Comedy fans? Look no further if you want to find how much man has in common with ape...and most of it has to do with making noise and flinging a bunch of crap.