mcniscool

In 2004, Martin Scorsese directed his 20th film "The Aviator", starring Leonardo DeCaprio. This same year, Robert Vince directed his 5th film, "Most Xtreme Primate". These two films were same year, and both came from legendary directors. There was only one difference, one got a lot more recognition, and the other was objectively better. Now it should be obvious to you, the person reading this review, that the superior movie between the two is without a doubt "Most Xtreme Primate". For Scorsese fans, this may come as a shock, and you may disagree with me on this. But please allow be to explain exactly why that this movie is better than Scorsese's flick. FIrstly, casting. The simian playing Jack in this film is superb at acting, and truly makes the audience think he is a chimpanzee snowboarder. On the other hand, Leo DeCaprio plays Leo DeCaprio, and all the audience can see is Leo DeCaprio in a funny pilot costume, instead of Howard Hughes, whom he is supposed to portray. Secondly, the plot. The film "The Aviator" follows Scorsese's predictable plot of a tragic hero, and details the downfall of Howard Hughes, and the events that led to his eventual breakdown. Anybody who has seen any Scorsese film would be able to predict this from the first 5 minutes, and it gives the viewer an obvious result. On the contrary, "MXP" manages to defy the trope that many film makers are forced into, by choosing to defy the current norms of cinema and do what many films are afraid to; give the protagonist a happy ending. Jack is neither a good or bad chimp, and in a Scorsese film, he likely would end by tearing someone's face off or something along those lines. But Robert Vince is not scared to provide the simian with a pleasent ending, and is with this, makes the film much more unpredictable and gives the viewer a much greater feeling of suspense. And finally, this film has one thing that "The Aviator" could never have. This film contains a chimpanzee on a snowboard. Nothing Scorsese could ever make can beat this film, and that is an objective truth.

I am a professional chimp wrangler, and I know as a fact that the character in this film is not a real chimpanzee. It looks nothing like a real chimp either. This CGI abomination proves that in modern society, we value fancy gadgets and computers over good old fashioned chimp labor. The directors of this film could have taken this in a great direction, this film could have had amazing potential. There have been a stream of great chimp-based spy films and television shows, including "Lancelot Link", "Spymate", and others. But this film, unfortunately, appears to have taken more after the film "Funky Monkey", which is the worst film I have ever watched. Now this film does not bring out the murderous rage that "Funky Monkey" did, but the CGI chimp coupled with the extremely mediocre, pro-interventionist plot make this film extremely dissapointing. I just hope this will not set a precedent, and directors will continue to utilize the boundless acting skills of real chimpanzees. This film could have been so much more. Bring back the chimps.

If you look at my profile, you will know that I am a HUGE fan of chimpanzee movies. I was literally raised on Lancelot Link, and I have been a massive fan of beloved classics like "Ed" and "Bedtime for Bonzo", so much so that I even pursued a career working with chimps. This is why that when I heard about this film, I was so excited for its release. However, upon seeing it, I was not only disappointed but disgusted. I will not exaggerate one bit when I say that I truly despise this film. I actually pity the poor producer of this film for having to see this showcased. This film is so horrifically terrible that it has led to my hospitalization three times, once for a brain aneurysm, and twice for attempting to jump off of a bridge over the highway, leading to my current routine of court-mandated weekly therapy sessions. When I first saw this film, I was filled with nothing but pure rage, pure malice, pure hatred, so much so that I began unconsciously punching the brick wall in the alley behind the theatre until my hand bled and I had a hairline fracture in my wrist from the stress of my fist hitting the wall at full force repeatedly. If I was put in a room with a firearm and two bullets, and I was with Josef Stalin and the director of this film, I would shoot Stalin twice, simply so I could beat the director to death with my bare fists. This film is revolting to me. It truly disgusts me. It makes me want to vomit out my entrails all over the floor, just to end the suffering of viewing this film. I rewatched "Full Metal Jacket" the other day, one of my all-time favorite movies. But as soon as I saw the beginning scene, I could see nothing besides Mathew Modine and was reminded of his participation in "Funky Monkey", which caused me to repeatedly bash my head against the wall until restrained by my friends. This film is a skid mark on the formerly flawless slab that was chimpanzee films. I hate it. I hate it with a burning passion. Even writing this review has resulted in such feelings of malice that I have shattered my coffee mug in my hand. The main character of the movie isn't even a monkey. It's called "Funky Monkey". The main character is a chimp. IT MAKES NO SENSE. Why was this infernal film ever created? What unholy entity created the idea of this film, because I know a human is incapable of such evil, and I hope with all of my soul that our God is not so malicious as to create this film out of spite for humanity. This film is the embodiment of true suffering, of true pain, of true horror. The anger that this film has created for me has no words, and cannot be expressed through words. The only way of describing my feelings towards this film is pure and utter hatred. I truly hate this movie, in every sense of the word.

This film is horrifically misunderstood, and tragically underrated. I saw this film when it first premired in 1996, and I absolutely loved it. I was 26 at the time, and had already seen many chimp-themed films, having grown up on shows like Lancelot Link. And out of all of my chimp films, none have had such a misunderstood and insightful story like this film, Ed. Many critics and viewers seem to have interpreted this film as a silly family film about a baseball-loving chimp, and have criticized it for its seemingly absurd plot. But in reality, this is in no way a family film, and is in reality a satirical avant-garde approach on the real life issues with the treatment of athletes in major league baseball, as well as many other sporting events.

Let me explain. The film details the journey of baseball player Jack "Deuce" Cooper, who is played by Matt LeBlanc, and his chimpanzee companion Ed. Now on the surface, this duo may seem like simply a wacky pair of unlikely friends, when in reality the relationship goes much deeper. Have you ever seen the movie Fight Club(1999)? In this film, the protagonist and his partner, Tyler Durden, take a journey into madness and violence, forming a "fight club", and eventually transforming into a fully fledged terrorist group. This development is mostly done by Durden, and the protagonist is pushed around by him through the entire film. The catch; they are the same person, and Durden is simply part of the protagonist's personality, being personified in his mind. Now I am no professional movie analyst, but I believe that the film Ed dove off of the same theme. I believe that the protagonist, Deuce, is a real figure, a small-town baseball player traveling to the major leagues. However, I believe that the director intended for Ed to be implicitly seen as a figment of Deuce's imagination, a personification of all of the bad sides of him, and all the suffering he has to go through to make his trip into major league sports. Now this may be seen as a stretch, but let me explain myself in this. Through the film, Deuce exists for two purposes; to play baseball, and to watch over Ed. He encounters no suffering, no poor treatment, no scandalious behavior, and instead simply plays the game to the roaring applause of everyone around him. In contrast, Ed encounteres all sorts of suffering. He is sold off, kidnapped, tortured, and nearly killed by overindulging in what he sees as a "treat". You can probably see what this is alluding to now. Ed is "sold off" by the big baseball executives, "tortured" in order to make him perform better, and after all of this suffering ends, he resorts to taking the edge off by taking copious quantities of "bananas", which leads to a near-death hospital trip. Ed is a visual representation of all of the dirty buisness associated with joining professional sports, from steroids, to abuse, to everything else. This makes Ed the visual representation of everything Deuce has to go through to make his way into professional baseball, all of the nasty little trials that nobody wants to see on television. And that means that Ed is not real. Doesn't this film make so much more sense now. This is why a grown man was assigned roomates with a random chimpanzee, and why random thugs seem to have an interest in torturing some chimp. With this realization, we can piece the film together a lot better.

Now with all of this information known, it brings us to the ending to this film. After Deuces first successful game in the major leagues, Ed, Deuce, and his neighbor Lydia and her daughter Elizabeth, all become one big happy family. Now this does not represent the happy ending that it may appear to be. With the realization that Ed and Deuce are the same individual, we can piece together that the ending represents more than the four simply becoming a happy family. It represents Deuce making his peace with Ed, making his peace with the abuses and torture of the big executives, making his peace with the true corruption of the sport. Up until this point he regarded himself as different, as a seperate individual as compared to the corrupt nature of the sport. Yet at the end, he finally gives up on trying to remain seperate, on trying to stay different. He stops fighting and gives up, and Ed wins. This ending is the end of Ed, the end of Deuce as he was, and represents the two becoming the same. Deuce is not seperate from the corruption anymore, he is the corruption. I wish more critics were able to analyze this movie more deeply, and if they did, I believe that the 0% on rotten tomatoes would have risen to 100%.

I am a HUGE fan of this movie. I grew up in Texas during the Reagan administration, but I never knew much about him due to not seeing the outside world very often. However, every adult around me seemed to love him, constantly talking about the "tinkle down" or something. But that political talk never interested me. I am a man of convictions, and I can tell a good man when I see one. And once I saw this film, I knew that Reagan was not only a good man, but was correct on everything.

Let me give some background information. I love chimpanzee movies. I actually love them so much that I chose to pursue a career in chimp wrangling. And out of all of my experience both with chimps in film, and real chimps, this film has given me the most real interpretation of the complex interpersonal relationships that chimps have. I love this movie, and I love Ronald Reagan. This movie, and Reagans phenominal acting has convinced me beyond a doubt that Ronald Reagan is our best president. I still know very little about his actual policy, but what I do know is that the chemistry between him and that chimp was phenomenal. By the end, I was legitimately convinced that Reagan had Bonzo the chimp as his running mate, and believed this for 6 years until someone told me that Bush was his running mate instead. This movie was amazing, and my only qualm was that Reagan didn't explain his political stances more, which would have helped me support him even more. Overall this movie had some lost potential, but was still an AMAZING piece of cinema.

This television show is not only amazing, but has actually shaped my entire adult life. When I was nine years old, I was shipped off to a remote Aventist commune in Waco, Texas, and kept there until I turned 21. In this commune, we were given few luxuries, with activities mostly consisting of frolicking outside and shooting firearms at stray dogs and cats. But one of the scarce luxuries we were given was a dvd recording of this very show, Lancelot Link. As children, we would all pretend to be the characters from the show, walking around with our fists on the floor and screeching at anyone we saw. I remember our group's leader David would always turn the show on and laugh, and would even sometimes shoot his gun into the air out of laughter. This show alone made my life in the compound enjoyable, and I still wonder to this day what became of the fun little compound that my youth was spent at.

When I left the compound in 1992, I went out into a strange, foreign world of which I had little contact with. The only idea of the outside world I had was from this show, Lancelot Link. Because of this, I chose my lifelong profession; chimpanzee wrangler. Basically, if you don't already know, a chimp wranglers job is to wrangle chimps. We usually use large nets, shaped similarly to butterfly nets that you would see, but will also occasionally use net guns, or pieces of meat on enlarged fishing poles. We go around from city-to-city and find stray chimps, usually escaped from circuses or homes or nightclubs, and wrangle them into our special chimp-pen, where we return them to their original owners. One day however, as I was doing my job, a perculiar chimp drew my attention. We had been called to retreve it, and had located it in a dark alleyway. I looked at the chimp, and noticed something strange. The chimp was wearing a trenchcoat and a really cool little hat. I thought to myself, is this Lancelot Link??? And this brings me to a realization, that has forced me to take a star off of my review. Lancelot Link is not particularly sneaky or secretive. In fact, he sticks out like a sore chimpy thumb in a crowd, making him a terrible secret agent. For this reason alone, I am forced to make the tough decision to rate this show a 9/10. I love Lancelot Link, but it is totally unrealistic, simply because Link is not very sneaky.

I am no stranger to film, having seen and analyzed all of the greatest films of our generation, from "The Godfather", to "Apocalypse Now", to "Citizen Kane". These films were amazing yes, with stunning cinematography, amazing acting, and beautifully written scripts. But none of these films have left me in awe like this film did. I had seen many chimp-based films in the past, from "Most Extreme Primate" to "Spymate", and with this I had no expectations of anything exceptional or good from this film. But I was mistaken. This beautifully irreverent satire of the classic propagandist spy film demonstrates that our generation is truly in a new renaissance of cinema, with this beautiful piece of artwork serving as our pièce de résistance, our Mona Lisa, our Sistine Chapel. This film gives me confidence, not only in the future of film, but in the future of society as a whole. In a world where art seems to be held second to corperate pandering and American consumerism, this film stands alone as a beacon against the tide of sellout films concerned only with money. And it not only stands alone, but it fights back against the tide, with its brilliant usage of satire and dry humor. It gives us, the viewer, an enthralling plot full of action and suspense, but does not focus on the action as many movies do, but instead focuses on the complex interpersonal relations between Minkey; a chimp spy who was tortured and experimented on by the United States government to transform him into a ruthlessly efficient killer, and unwittingly used as an instrument of American interventionism during the Cold War, until the Soviet Union discovers him, and the US government decides to abandon him, with his life only being protected by his partner, Mike, another US agent who struggles throughout the film between his brainwashed loyalty to the United States government, and his moral compass, in a similar way to the character Joker in the Kubrick film "Full Metal Jacket". The film shows the pair fighting for a cause that is morally ambiguous, doing the dirty work for a country that doesn't care for them. Another great central character is Mike's daughter, Amilea. This masterfully written character demonstrates a sense of total naivety, being unaware of the moral ambiguity and horrors that are truly present in the world. She is coerced by Dr. Farley--another great character--to help him build a weapon of mass destruction in the name of "science", and is central in the fight of moral ambiguity shown in the film. Overall, this chimp film had me in awe, and I will definitely be seeing this another few times. Thank you Robert Vince for delivering me this masterpiece.