In a way, that poster image says more about the film than I ever could. Also, “one of America’s most wanted”? DID THAT MONKEY KILL JOHN WALSH’S SON?!

If Dunston Checks In was a clusterfuck of Marxian slobs v. snobs farce mixed with an orangutan that got fucked up on champagne, then Monkey Trouble is a full-length lesson from asshole parents to stupid children that technically qualifies as a film. Much like in real life according to indisputable news gathering service Internet Movie Database, Eva really wants a pet, in this case a dog. But Susan Sarandon (played by Mimi Rogers) doesn’t think she can take care of a pet on her own, especially since she refuses to help out with her baby half-brother she totally never asked for. To make matters more narratively convenient, Tim Robbins (Tappy Tibbons from Requiem for a Dream, the supervillain Hourglass in Superhero Movie) is allergic to dogs. Tim Robbins is always having sinus problems in this movie, even when there are no dogs in the vicinity; combine that with his occupation as a police lieutenant and I’m thinking there’s a whole other plot going on with Tim Robbins being Bad Lieutenant. I say a family friendly flick about a kid finding a monkey and getting into shenanigans needs a gritty police drug addiction subplot, just like a gritty police story about abuse of authority and spiraling vices could use an interstitial about a Capuchin monkey creating lighthearted mischief. Speaking of which, I learned two major things from Monkey Trouble: people in California are never, ever surprised or shocked by the presence of a monkey outside of the traditional confines (zoo, circus, preserve, Greek restaurant, etc.) and the 90s was rife with adorable primates posing as entertainers while actually operating as thieves. First Dunston Fucks The Prime Minister’s Wife or whatever it was called and now this. Did I miss something? Did the 90s feature a persistent crime spree of old world ethnics using apes and monkeys to bilk people of their valuables and it’s just been overshadowed in pop culture by things like Monica Lewinsky, the Unabomber and Surge? I feel like there are two distinct periods in American history: the period of organ grinders and the period of civil rights. The two do not and cannot crossover. In the same year he played The Wolf in Pulp Fiction, Harvey Keitel portrays Azro, the aforementioned alcoholic organ grinder Gypsy who lives in a trailer/caravan with his monkey accomplice and I guess he has an estranged wife and child, the film is rather vague and I’ve not yet tracked down the fabled 187 minute director’s cut on Criterion laserdisc. When it comes to villains of kids movies, Azro is really fucking low on the list. The Wet Bandits are the Hillside Stranglers compared to him. I get that you can’t make them too imposing or too complex and they’ve got to be susceptible to pratfalls Michael Richards would call broad and simpering, but I felt embarrassed for everyone every time Harvey Keitel appeared on screen. Keitel also claimed he took the role for his daughter’s sake. Monkey Trouble should qualify as child abuse.

The soundtrack features some of the most atrocious white boy rap of the 1990s, which is a feat worth noting. Remember Quo? Of course you don’t.

So Thora Birch hooks up with this monkey (“hook up” in the friend sense, not in the Thora Birch and her father sense) and the film becomes a collection of scenes of the kid learning how to take care of a monkey while going to elaborate measures to hide the monkey’s presence from her friends, family and outsiders. I guess there are what UN inspectors would determine are “jokes”, like the monkey shitting in the sink and pissing on the floor, but it’s still rather tiresome. She names the monkey “Dodger”, because Eva wears a red baseball cap (unofficial, mind you) representing the Los Angeles Dodgers. Dodger is a terrible monkey name. His original name was Fingers and that’s even worse. You name a mobster Fingers, not a monkey. Possibly a monkey who’s a mobster. Christ, that gives me a bad flashback to Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation… The film depicts 90s California as facilitating an easy and readily available support system for monkey ownership, as evidenced by a pet store that allows Eva to leave the monkey there during school and a librarian who doesn’t even charge the kid for photocopies (although for that last one, the librarian’s clearly intimidated by Dodger, no photocopies might’ve meant no more face in her situation). The need to hide Dodger from everyone forces Eva to become the opposite of what Susan Sarandon complained about at the beginning, as she cleans up her room and feigns interest in her family to deflect attention away from her and the monkey who’s literally on her back. (I bet one of the writers thought of that, smiled and jerked himself off for 5 minutes.) She’s defensive and paranoid all the time, at which point I realized that owning a monkey was a metaphor for street drugs. Playing with a monkey also results in a lot of giggling and a weird smell on your person. Monkey Trouble is the new Reefer Madness.

A true professional, Harvey insisted on real whiskey in these scenes, no matter how many takes they had to do.

Now, I know the question at the front of your mind: what’s the Italian mafia is up to? In easily the most superfluous subplot in cinematic history, Harvey Keitel receives a contract from the mob to use his monkey to fleece a dead woman’s belongings during an estate auction. I’ll admit my mafia information is limited to The Sopranos, some true crime books and The Godfather Part III, but do they regularly outsource to performers they find at the boardwalk? Was the infamous Iceman originally a caricature artist who impressed some goombahs with his detailed and precise huge headed small bodied people driving a dune buggy sketches? Ostensibly entanglement with the mob gives Keitel more incentive to track down his runaway monkey, but he doesn’t need more incentive. There’s a hard R version of Monkey Trouble from his perspective; he’s an alcoholic dresses like a gay pirate just struggling to make ends meet, his own self-destructive and controlling nature destroying all his personal relationships to the point of his own son having neither respect nor pity for him and now his fucking monkey is missing. What I’m saying is strip out the Thora Birch scenes and Monkey Trouble is The Wrestler. Anyway, these goombahs are Corky Romano level of nonthreatening and intelligence insulting, with a frequently alluded to “boss” that’s never actually seen. It’s built up a bit and goes nowhere, which is a recurring theme in this piece of shit. There are so many things left unexplained, ambiguous or confusing, like the character of Tessa. Tessa is a teenage girl who appears most often to push the baby’s stroller, so you’d think she’s the babysitter, but she also attends the family meals, suggesting she might be Tim Robbins’ daughter from a previous marriage, though no one explicitly treats her like a daughter, a stepdaughter, a stepsister, etc. Whatever role she served in the plot must’ve been excised in the scripting process or the editing process, leaving her a vestigial presence. Maybe she’s their live-in female sex companion. They do live on the left coast, after all, and the Sarandon/Robbins coupling was known for their hatred of America and its values…

This was originally even more risque, but the MPAA threatened to give it an NC-17.

I’ll give the filmmakers credit over Dunston Checks In: they seem to actually give a fuck about the primate they’re portraying. Dunston was basically a hairy human with Christlike agility; he smoked, drank, wore clothing, and people consistently failed to address him as an ape or orangutan, instead slurring the guy with a litany of “monkey” and “gorilla” references. Right off the bat Azro corrects the mobsters that call Dodger an “ape” and Eva learns actual information about Capuchin monkeys in how they live, what they eat, how they behave, all delivered in a voiceover that downright threatens to be educational. Amurri does right the ship before that happens, though, with the beloved kids movie contrivance of the kid and her monkey pal managing to get a weekend by themselves when her father’s busy flyin’ whirlybirds on his weekend visitation and she fails to tell Susan Sarandon that. Uh oh, the dad’s fridge is empty and Eva’s got no money! Thus, Monkey Trouble teaches children a lesson: if you’ve got no food and no money, busk on the boardwalk until you drop. It’s at this point Eva realizes her pet’s been lifting wallets and shiny objects the whole time, including the improbable early scene where Keitel has Dodger ransack the Sarandon apartment as a good faith demonstration for the mobsters. The predisposition Dodger has towards thievery is the titular monkey trouble of the movie, and Eva solves the problem in the equivalent of a one day sexual harassment or sensitivity training seminar. Years of pickpocketing undone by a nine year old girl who’ll grow up to be the best and least successful actress in Ghost World. Cult deprogrammers and sexual reorientation therapists have nothing on this little girl. Unfortunately, Azro traces their steps with little difficulty, finding witnesses to the monkey’s adventures and easily obtaining personal information from a disgruntled grocery clerk. There’s also a sequence within Eva’s foray into busking that involves a man/monkey chase culminating in Dodger on a hang glider…I think if I explained it any further I’d kill brain cells I plan on sacrificing to a glass of Pinot Noir later tonight. Suffice it to say, you can all cross “seeing a monkey on a hang glider” off your bucket list. You’re welcome.

I’m pretty sure this was how Cory Lidle died.

You have to admire Azro’s detective skills; few men who smell of bourbon and feces (some monkey, some not) manage to do so much with so little. I’d like to take a moment to talk about my favorite non-hang gliding scene, which is when Azro confronts Eva at her father’s house. All throughout, when people ask where she obtained Dodger, Eva’s said she got him from the Carribean, the land of pirates. (Monkey Trouble predicted the Johnny Depp/Al Gore Disney franchise.) So when she sees Azro peering through the window, she screams “A PIRATE!”. Of course. I don’t know why I didn’t make the connection before. See, I always considered Gypsies to be Jews with worse publicity, but in fact they’re the pirates of the land. Or maybe we ought to rename pirates “Sea Gypsies”. “Watch Tom Hanks struggle to fend off Sea Gypsies in Captain Phillips!” In the lowest stakes and least propulsive chase sequence of all time, Eva discovers that much like Samson losing his hair, a Gypsy loses power if you unhitch his caravan. When Thora Birch is rebuffed by a cabbie who doesn’t accept fare from minors, she has the wonderfully terrible line “I’m not a minor, I’m in a major hurry!” and the nose picking 7 year olds in the audience learn that cab drivers worship the almighty dollar, with speed determined by how big a wad of cash you shove in the guy’s face. Other lessons learned from the film: 1. Boardwalks are employment centers for grifters. 2. 80% of taking care of a monkey is providing a steady supply of diapers (in one glorious continuity fuckup, Dodger leaves the gypsy caravan wearing little monkey diaper pants but when Eva finds him he’s starkers. I imagine a night on the mean streets of LA forced the little guy to chow down on his own pants for sustenance). 3. To teach responsibility, a child should be given an exotic animal with several open warrants. Fuck sending your little tax break to “public school”; make ‘em watch this shit until they know every Quo song by heart.

Thora Birch has been caught in much more compromising positions with her father. Not only was/is he her manager, he’s a former porn…well, not “star”… He was a porn character actor. Sort of a James Rebhorn of getting blown.

Much like JFK’s assassination, the chickens come home to roost when Susan Sarandon uncovers Eva’s lies and the cache of stolen valuables from Dodger’s crime spree. She and the dad compare stories, holes are apparent, they try to pull a quick intervention on the kid, who blames all the discrepancies on a monkey that’s now been kidnapped by Azro. Look, maybe a found monkey is believable, maybe a Gypsy in an urban area is believable, but combining the two into one explanation sounds like a not very good Michael Crichton novel. In a show of blatant favoritism to the new kid on the scene, Sarandon only buys Eva’s story when the little brother says his first word, “monkey”. While the dad sees it as the kid referring to the little monkey doll on top of Eva’s bed, Sarandon takes the word of an infant as bond and is proven correct when Dodger comes out of hiding. This is another problem with the picture; to accurately convey a sense of danger or suspense in the mean old Gypsy, he needs to be able to successfully capture Dodger. Here the monkey seems to be on par with Anthony Fremont, and it wouldn’t have strained credibility had Harvey Keitel ended up in a fucking cornfield. Indeed, the climax of the film sees Dodger having to save Eva from the clutches of the Roma Menace. How, you ask? Well, things are back to one with both her and Keitel at the park where she met the monkey in the first place. It’s a real Lassie situation where Dodger leads the family and a decent contingent of the LAPD there, with Tim Robbins realizing he can’t find his gun. CUT TO THE FUCKING CAPUCHIN WITH A HANDGUN, FIRING THE HANDGUN AT HARVEY KEITEL SUCCESSFULLY. Tim Robbins is fucking spending the next two years at a desk, if not outright fired. There’s degrees of fucking up as a law enforcement officer; excessive force earns a “eh, probably deserved it”; killing an unarmed black guy means some TV appearances and fat stacks donated by the KKK; losing your firearm to the goddamn 2 foot tall monkey who previously burgled your house without your knowledge is a one way ticket to the unemployment line. Fuck, Mike Logan got exiled to Staten Island for a decade for punching a politician who he knew murdered someone! If Logan had lost his gun to an adorable little primate McCoy would’ve gone for the death penalty. Wisely eschewing an homage to the finale of Reservoir Dogs, Amurri has the cops arrest the Gypsy (amusingly before the two worst mobsters can, I don’t know, give him a swirly or whatever) and a custody dispute over the monkey between Eva and Son of Gypsy that lasts 90 seconds, isn’t earned narratively or emotionally and seems to be the product of someone on set pointing out “hey, uh, that monkey actually belonged to someone before…”. Good on Dodger for picking Thora Birch, because if Gypsies aren’t using monkeys to steal they’re using ‘em for a damn fine stew.

I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow you head clean off, you’ve gotta ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?

As Tim Robbins lacks an allergy to South American monkeys, Eva’s allowed to keep Dodger and uses him to resolve a long running subplot of such importance I’m mentioning it for the first time now: the show and tell presentation. That seems to be Eva’s main impetus for wanting a pet, to wow her fellow third graders (the fucking Dragons of prepubescence) with a creature of verve, grace and majesty. If not a rottweiler, why the fuck not a monkey? Dialogue suggests she’s put off her turn for a while, as the teacher tells her she can push it back to next month. The suggestion to use the baby brother is rebuffed; Eva notes the infant’s a “nerd”, which goes to illustrate anti-Doctor Who prejudice existed in the 90s too. By the final scene of Eva introducing her brother AND her monkey to the class, Amurri is trying to tell the viewer that the main character has changed, has grown. The tenuous family of Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Eva, the baby and whatever the fuck Tessa’s supposed to be has solidified thanks to the glue (or “Phil Hartman”) of the family, a monkey who likes brightly colored hats. (Note: Turning Capuchins into glue is illegal in all states except Virginia.) I like that the director left shit open for a sequel, and given the skillset the movie gives Dodger the possible paths are numerous. Dodger could heal the wounds of the 1994 strike by joining LA’s starting rotation after Ramon Martinez falls victim to a Gypsy curse. I think he and Hideo Nomo would have great comedic chemistry. Maybe the government shutdown gets resolved when the monkey shows Clinton and Gingrich how to really have a good time. Monkey Trouble 2: Dodger Conquers Mars Because Why Not. It could still happen, a sequel. Thora Birch probably needs the money and the public is primed to accept a new primate actor for Dodger. Speaking of which, the monkey actor Finster is one of the few such thespians to have a multi-credit IMDB page. He (or she, there’s no dong shots) was uncredited in Cutthroat Island. Probably did it as a favor to Renny Harlin.

“And so, with the successful show and tell presentation, Eva was accepted into Harvard.”

I love that at one point Ridley Scott was going to direct Monkey Trouble (indeed, he’s an executive producer on the finished product). Sandwiched between 1492 and White Squall would’ve been a fucking comedy about a kid learning with great monkey comes great responsibility; doing that would’ve likely put him on Tony Scott’s path. Even without Ridley behind the camera the cast and crew is wildly overqualified for this sort of thing; usually the point of “a kid and his or her animal” movies is to spend all the capital on making sure the animal hits its marks and doesn’t bite anyone and everything from cinematography to acting to music can be slashed to garbage because, hey, cute little monkey. One of the mobsters played the beat cop in Harvey Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant! (Those between between take conversations must’ve been fun. “So, Argo, what you got? Some shitty little nephew who’s not old enough for Taxi Driver?”) Keitel shouldn’t have to debase himself like this; nothing would change if you replaced him with Carrot Top or repurposed clips of Charles Grodin from Beethoven’s Second Round of Rabies Shots. Nobody can save the embarrassing script so why bother hiring the likes of Mimi Rogers? Even little Thora Birch was taking a step down from Patriot Games and Hocus Pocus. The monkey’s the only one who doesn’t come out looking lousy, and even then he suffers from a shitty voice performance from Frank Welker. The production appears to only have been able to afford about six monkey sounds, robbing Dodger of the required emotional range for the character to resonate.

Wardrobe borrowed from the short-lived “Cruising on the Seven Seas” off-Broadway show.

In spite of the above vitriol, Monkey Trouble is worth a look if you have literally nothing else going on in your life. Finster the monkey is cute as shit (RIP) and somebody uploaded it in full on YouTube. I imagine a reboot of the movie would have Dodger bootlegging movies, since no one expects a monkey to hold a digital camera steady. Those interested in seeing the underlying causes behind the recent upswing in anti-Roma sentiment in Europe owes it to themselves to watch Harvey Keitel’s performance. Otherwise, just go play some Donkey Kong Country, coincidentally also originally released in 1994. You play a gorilla who rides around on rhinos and frogs and kills lizards who stole your hoard of bananas that never seems to start rotting.

I was first introduced to POTA back when I was just a young kid growing up in the 80’s.  I don’t know if I should, but I associate my introduction to it with my father.  It’s quite possible I think of him being a bigger fan than he was.  It’s more likely he just watched it with me.  But the first movie with Charlton Heston was on the Disney Channel back when it was a pay cable channel like HBO, where you had to get a subscription for it.  I could probably go off on quite a long tangent about how much greater Disney Channel was back then, being a big part of what planted the seeds for many of the things I would come to like for what has been the rest of my life thus far.

I loved the original movies. Check that.  I love the original movies.  And not because they are, as some might refer to them, cheesy good fun.  I like them because I consider them great movies.  All of them.  Sure, they show their time as you sit through them, and I know more than a few people who would fall asleep during the first one.  But that one in particular is a classic in science fiction, and I didn’t think they could make a movie nowadays about the same subject matter that, well, mattered.

In the early 2000’s when Timmy Burton came on the scene with his remake/sequel/reimagining (I don’t know that they ever did decide what it was- which could be the problem), I was pretty stoked.  A movie like this with a lot of practical effects?  And some really great actors?  Good stuff.  Then I saw the movie with a fellow young nerd, driving 20 miles to the nearest town since our town didn’t get the flick.  I don’t recall if she was a huge fan of the Apes as I was, or just general nerdery, but neither of us really liked the flick.  We liked parts of it, but as with many post-2000 Burton movies, it left us with the feeling like we’d consumed a meal that left us with empty stomachs.

And when Rise came out, I was a little nervous it’d be another empty cash-grab.  One last attempt to see if there was any money to be milked from the Ape-cow.  And I couldn’t have been more wrong.  It was, and I know this comparison is already starting to get old, the Batman Begins for POTA.  It reset the franchise while adhering to it, paying tribute to it, and even fitting into it.  But it told the same story in a more modern way, weaving complex social themes with a wonderful action story that tells a grave warning about a great many things.

If Rise was Batman Begins, then Dawn is most certainly The Dark Knight.  It continues the story, raises the stakes, and brings us into a world fully realized.  Every good thing you’ll hear or read about this movie is true.  Andy Serkis deserves an Oscar for this and the previous movie (something co-star James Franco strongly petitioned for after the last flick), along with some of the other performers bringing supporting apes to life.  The actor who portrayed Koba is a highlight.  There is nothing to make you believe that these are anything other than actual talking apes.  And part of what makes their performances work is that their characters are given real parts.

Another comparison to be made with Dawn is the recent train wreck calling itself a Transformers movie (which I hate to admit I know people who liked it).  Where Transformers fails, Dawn succeeds on every level.  The most important of these is, where the “creative” forces behind TF tried to give their CGI robots something to say when it came to quips, and to move the story along, Dawn has actual characters.  These apes have distinct personalities and points of view.  The story flows naturally from both of these, instead of one forcing the other because it’d be cool.  And there are points to be made on both sides.

The other characters in Dawn, the humans, are also far superior to the, um, robotic homo sapiens in TF.  They also have those personality things, and points of view.  It’s when their interests among each other and with the apes, and then among the apes, clash that we get to the meat of things.  Events are set in motion based on logical trains of thought, and not arbitrarily thrown together as a plot.  Sure, there are “bad” guys in this, but they have a point.  And you might agree with their points.  Mine is that no matter what side of the divide you fall on, human or ape (or between their internal divides), you give a shit about somebody.  In other summer blockbusters, there are too often occasions where everyone is expendable, and you feel nothing.

I get the sense that upon further viewings of this movie (and I will watch it again), I will discover little things I didn’t see before.  I get sucked into Rise every time it’s on TV, and I still find subtleties and hints at things reaching for and building to a larger canon in the story.  Only the writers know where the story will go to get us to the next plateau in the saga (Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver have done great with these two films), but I’m intrigued.  Predictions point to the title probably being War of (or for) the Planet of the Apes, since you know, ‘Battle for’ is already taken (plus, don’t Rise and Dawn really mean the same thing?  No more synonym titles, please). And if they can add to the roster of directors they have had in Rupert Wyatt and Matt Reeves, we’ll be in great shape.

Not just an orgy of summer explosions, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes continues the refreshed franchise in meaningful and entertaining ways that pay homage to the original films while appropriately continuing to set itself apart as its own wonderful entity.