George of the Jungle

The film “George of the Jungle”, directed by Sam Weisman is a romantic comedy and parody. In other words, it fully rips off Tarzan and makes a classic story seem stupid.



In the beginning of the film the audience is shown a short cartoon about how George came to be in the jungle. When he was a baby George was flying over the jungle in a plane when it crashed. The passengers never found him and so apes raised him. Then the scene it cut to the present when a woman called Ursula came to the jungle as a tourist. She meets her materialist fiance Lyle Vanderbrute unexpectedly who wants to get out of the jungle as soon as possible. Lyle drags Ursula to see the apes but then a lion traps them. This is when George appears and saves Ursula by owning the lion in wrestling. Then George carries her off, takes care of her and goes back to the city with her. Then George’s friend, an educated ape, is kidnapped by poachers and George races back to save him. Ursula realises she loves George and goes after George, helps him bash the poachers and lives with him happily ever after in the jungle.



This film is extremely good, if the audience were three–year–olds. It has an extraordinarily shallow and predictable plot and the gags and jokes are simply not funny. The actions of the characters are overtly exaggerated and very unrealistic. And the depth of the characters is about that of paper cuttings. This movie is designed to be viewed by people with the IQ of under fifty points. And frankly, I feel insulted at being made to watch this poor excuse of a study subject.



There are, however, silly moments in the film. Like when we see a picture of a powerful, godlike human swinging through the jungle. The narrator has built up our expectation of greatness then, suddenly. The “hero” slams into a tree. This provides the audience with a laugh – the first time, but then, as if the scriptwriter ran out of ideas, they keep doing it again and again and...