GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE

GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE is a lightweight, banal parody of the Tarzan story. Like his more famous predecessor, Tarzan, baby George was raised by the animals in darkest Africa when the plane on which he and his parents were traveling crashed into a mountain. As soon as George reaches his maturity, Ursula Stanhope (Leslie Mann), a wealthy heiress, enters the scene. Ursula is indulging her romantic fantasies by taking an African safari. Her betrothed, the effete Lyle Van De Groot, finds her deep in the jungle and wants to take her back to civilized society, but she wants to find the legendary great white ape.
The African porters are repulsed by Lyle’s condescending ways, so Ursula and Lyle head off alone into the dark jungle. Suddenly, a lion attacks, and George shows up, a la THE JUNGLE BOOK, to rescue the beautiful Ursula from his lion friend. During the rescue, Ursula is knocked unconscious when George fails to watch out for that tree. Ursula awakens in George’s elegant tree house as she is being cared for by his butler, Ape, who speaks perfect English, wears glasses and reads voraciously.
When Lyle recovers his dignity, he heads out after George. George and the animals get the best of Lyle and his goons, but Lyle wounds George. Therefore, Ursula takes George back home to San Francisco to care for him. Ursula’s parents in San Francisco are disgusted by George, who is not their class, but Ursula’s girlfriends swoon over George, especially her best friend, who sees George au naturel.
Meanwhile, back in the Jungle, Lyle’s goons capture Ape. Tookie the toucan flies to San Francisco to warn George. With the help of lion, Shep the elephant, who thinks he is a dog, and Tookie, George heads back to Africa, saves Ape, trounces Lyle, and ends up marrying Ursula.
An intentional parody of the noble savage, whether Tarzan or Mowgli, GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE has its funny moments. Regrettably, its humor is too often banal, scatological or sexual. Brendan Fraser almost succeeds in pretending to be a cartoon. Leslie Mann has her moments as Ursula. John Cleese is consistently good as Ape. Even so, this movie has neither the wonderful silly humor of the cartoon series, nor the grandeur of THE JUNGLE BOOK. Instead, it is a much too earnest attempt at humor; a B movie without the vision and originality that could captivate audiences.
In a lackluster summer, GEORGE may do some business. After all, like many of the summer movies, it has a good TV commercial. However, it will quickly fade from the box office while the cartoon series will play on to the joy of children everywhere.
By the way, who came up with all this foul language for a family movie?