Primate

It’s been a while since “Lucy” (Johnny Sequoyah) has been home to her luxury family home in Hawai’i, so her arrival with friend “Kate” (Victoria Wyant) and the not quite so welcome “Hannah” (Jess Alexander) is eagerly awaited by her deaf dad “Adam” (Troy Kotsur), her younger sister “Erin” (Gia Hunter) and the undoubted star of the film - their pet chimp “Ben”. Now any sense of jeopardy which we might have had coming into this fearsome frat-flesh-fest is somewhat negated by the fact that there is a very useful slide at the top of the film that explains to us the dangers of hydrophobia. Putting two and two together does not require Stephen Hawking and so what we watch for the next ninety minutes sees a lot of people go ape. As ever with these type of films, I found myself largely disinterested in the characterisations of the humans - they are all the usual unremarkable people who’d readily bore you to death at a party, so with the exception of the mostly absent author “Adam” who did bring a little charisma to the proceedings, they were entirely deserving of their grizzly fates - especially the three hormonal boys whose short shrift did raise a smile, I have to admit. The plot is full of holes and some of the dialogue is really banal, but in best Rudd Weatherwax tradition it’s the animal that out-acts everyone and had me rooting for him. The moral? Well perhaps that’s just never to mix a mongoose and a chimpanzee?