Disney’s ‘Jungle 2 Jungle’ Is Two Times Too Much
Dilemmas in Disneyland! What do you do when a movie you own contains the corporately acceptable messages of tolerance, open-mindedness and fatherly understanding, but whose humor is based on the fact that people are animals (the reverse, as it happens, of the usual Disney formula)? What to do, what to do …
The first thing you don’t do is remake a movie that didn’t need to be made in the first place. “Little Indian, Big City” - which Disney released just about a year ago - was broad, vulgar and obvious. “Jungle 2 Jungle” is a virtual clone, except less charming.
The problem? It isn’t all Tim Allen’s fault - although the “Home Improvement” star should, at this lofty stage of his career, be able to demand scripts that don’t make him seem like a cranky, humorless old man. As Michael, the highly stressed commodities trader who discovers he has a 13-year-old son named Mimi-Siku (Sam Huntington) living in the Amazon jungle, Allen delivers all the combustion and confusion required.
It would be tough to call him likable, though. Obligated to bring Mimi to New York, he has to appease his ill-tempered fashion designer girlfriend (the always charming Lolita Davidovitch, who’s beginning to look like Shawn Colvin), keep his trading partner, Richard (Martin Short), from getting them killed by a Russian mobster (David Ogden Stiers), and train Mimi-Siku to be a more cosmopolitan practitioner of the blowgun and bow. Allen does it all with the charm of a Portuguese man-of-war.
“Jungle 2 Jungle” departs from its predecessor by omitting virtually all references to lust (the original jungle boy’s libido was a big part of the first film’s humor). Huntington is too androgynous-looking to inspire much heat anyway, but let’s face it: Pubescent sex, like representations of Satan or smoking, is strictly verboten in the current climate. To compensate, the filmmakers direct their wit in more proper directions, such as excretory functions and flatulence.
Or ethnic-flavored jokes: Allen’s “nightmare on bodega street” line when he’s on a Venezuelan pay phone. The crude way in which Russians are portrayed (OK, they’re gangsters, but why Russians? Because Italians would complain?). The patronizing manner in which the members of Mimi-Siku’s tribe are treated, and the tired, obligatory and largely inaccurate joke about how New York City cabdrivers don’t speak English. Forget political correctness. This stuff is boring. Trite. Lazy. To say nothing of contemptuous.
The kids at the screening I attended liked the pratfalls and slapstick, which are abundant, and involve things they’ve probably never seen, like someone charging at a door, the door opening at the last minute and the person running through the room, out a window and onto a picnic table. This stuff is funny if you haven’t seen it 40 or 50 times. When it comes to “Jungle 2 Jungle,” twice is already too much.
xxxx “JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE” Location: Lincoln Heights, North Division and Showboat cinemas Credits: Directed by John Pasquin, starring Tim Allen, Martin Short, Sam Huntington, Lolita Davidovich, JoBeth Williams, David Ogden Stiers, LeeLee Sobiesky, Valerie Mahaffey Running time: 1:51 Rating: PG