Congo

Plot:  When an expedition to the African Congo ends in disaster, a new team is assembled to find out what went wrong.

Director:

Frank Marshall

Writers:

Michael Crichton (novel), John Patrick Shanley (screenplay)

Stars:

Laura Linney, Tim Curry, Dylan Walsh

This is one of those movies that simply suffers from bad writing.  The acting is fine and the action is good, but the story is unoriginal and the plot just SUCKS.

The whole idea is that diamond mine is protected by a group of feral gorillas deep in the Congo.  The diamond mine hunters just happen to join up with a zoologist who specializes in gorillas and is trying to return one of his gorillas back to her homeland.

But there is a war going on for some reason, and there are soldiers all over the place, planes are getting blown out of the sky...and here comes Dr. Doolittle and his gorilla.

It's just so deeply stupid that he wouldn't turn around and go home, but instead brave almost certain death just to return his gorilla home.  It takes you out of the movie so quickly that you just stop caring.  When people start getting killed you just think to yourself, "Good.  The deserve it.  Darwin's theory at work."

I kinda like the movie myself, because even though it is stupid, I just really like the characters.  They are colorful and feel real, and everyone outside the main character makes sense.  If they made Laura Linney's character the protagonist and tweaked the story a bit, this could have been a decent movie.  But they didn't... so it ain't.

2/5 STARS