A Different Kind of Swinger [GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE]

From the Chicago Reader (August 1, 1997). — J.R.

George of the Jungle

Rating ** Worth seeing

Directed by Sam Weisman

Written by Dana Olsen and Audrey Wells

With Brendan Fraser, Leslie Mann, Thomas Haden Church, Holland Taylor, Richard Roundtree, Greg Cruttwell, Abraham Benrubi, and the voice of John Cleese.

GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE 2, Christopher Showerman, Angus T. Jones, Julie Benz, 2003. (c) Walt Disney Pictures.

There’s no getting around it: George of the Jungle is an amiable, highly ingratiating piece of lowbrow entertainment, and the audience of mainly young children and parents I saw it with on Saturday night clearly had a ball. So did I, for that matter. If consumer advice on where to take your kids is what’s needed, change “worth seeing” into “a must-see.” On the other hand, if I — a nonparent — had to choose between seeing it a second time and seeing the black-and-white Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942) for the third or fourth time on video, I wouldn’t blink before selecting the latter. Both movies, as it happens, are comedies — though klutzy George, who swings on vines directly into trees, is an even more ironic version of the noble savage — but there are also major differences between them that I suspect are generational. Read more