Animal Kingdom: Let's Go Ape

Obviously it's a Jamel Debouzze Debouzze Debouzze business. If you are not familiar with or not into Jamel Debouzze stuffs and his comic multi-french team you will probably find yourself lost in Debouzze's logic which is Debouzze's way of acting.

The story in 1h36 is about an instantaneous evolution simian-homo erectus which coexists with pterodactyls, the use of fire, music, dynasties...they don't respect how events occurs on the time line...which is not a bad thing if you have not yet had enough of Jamel Debouzze because you may like the way they get through it. You will definitely be disappointed if you try to compare this to, let's say "The Croods"

Watch with kids if you have time

Mmmmmmh ...

Although I have been using it for years, this is my first comment EVER on IMDb ! One advice : do not trust reviews :)

Maybe I end my silence because I think this cartoon/movie does not deserve such an unfair treatment ; or is it because I am French (excuse my English, but I wanted everyone to be able to read it... or not LOL) and have watched Jamel in so many different contexts since my teen age ?

I enjoyed the movie and truly do not understand its bad review here (and from what I read from google.fr) : - Visuals, effects and animations are far from being perfect (cheap motion capture that I usually do not like) but, this time, it worked with me, and provided me with enough paintings, colors and emotions - Voices (from the original, French, version), or at least main characters' voices are quite fun and well played (Edouard/Jamel, of course, but above all his best friend "Ian" made me laugh so many times) - Funky & Soul music goes along quite well and helps keeping a fresh and catchy rhythm - Progressively, light humour (a little "Gaulois" / Gallic (?), maybe) turns into an epic story, more profound that it seemed at first sight, and might even push you to think a little further and connect to the Man or the Monkey within yourselves... yep yep ;)

I expected to find "traditional Jamel's humour" (that I still quite enjoy), but I was eventually very surprised by "Mr. Debbouze's" first work as a director, by its quality and its variety that should entertain a quite larger audience. Some kind of (alternative) allegory of mankind... hahaha ;)

Finally, here is a list of things with which you might want to be at peace in order to enjoy the movie pleasantly, OR "Why I (did not) eat the critics" : 1) One has right to do a pastiche (quite successfully I would add) of the great Louis de Funès ; I only see here the humble and unexpected tribute from a man to a genius 2) One has right to make "incoherent" cartoons (with Pterodactyls and Humans living side by side)... Some directors even made movies about Humans living side by side with Dinosaurs... C'mon ... Guys ! Really ? 3) Jamel Debbouze has right to make a movie

All in all, I would recommend for family's entertainment (and fans of : Alain Chabat / Les Nuls / Astérix ...), original mixture of stupid gags and clever situations, available to every child with a caring eye (young or old).

This is one of the worst movie I have seen. And we lasted only 30mn before stopping the torture. And I am French.

The CGI is primitive, with nothing added to the obvious motion capture to make the character "alive", but most importantly, the story is abysmal and the character development non existent.

I am wondering how such an "object" can be made. It must cost some money to make, how is it possible to do not try to at least make something watchable? I guess you can see there the bane of the French entertainment industry: movies get income from pre-sales to TV channels, so they just have to show a bankable cast in some script that is sure to not offend anyone, and they cash in from TV braindead execs before even making the movie. I can see only this explanation for this "thing".

A perfect lesson on how NOT to do a movie.

There's a lot of story here but for some reason the people that made this movie decided to throw a lot of it out. Back in 1994 Roy Lewis, a British author, wrote a satirical book called "Evolution Man: Or How I Ate My Father". It's a wickedly funny book about a group of upwardly mobile hominids from the dawn of time. The father has just discovered fire and is learning about it's uses. Mother makes sure her kids finish all the toad on their plate before being excused from the table. Junior has made the first cave painting. And Uncle thinks that coming down from the trees and making flint tools will eventually lead to them being killed in a big bloody war. It's satire of modern issues and ideas set several million years ago. And one day somebody decided to make a movie about it. And it's awful.

From what I understand there's two versions of this movie. There's the original French that goes into more detail and there's the butchered English version that cuts out certain scenes. I haven't seen the English version so I can only speak of the French version. And even then, it's terrible.

Now the animation is... okay. There's nothing ground breaking here. It's adequate in a Saturday morning cartoon kind of way. But for some reason they decided to give the apes in this family very human looking faces. And my god, they go straight into the uncanny valley. They're downright terrifying. That coupled with how they move in rather cartoonish ways just increases the uncomfortable feeling you get.

I wanted to watch this movie to see how bad it could be. But by about the thirty minute mark I just couldn't take it any more. I couldn't focus on the story, which was butchered I might add, because every few seconds the faces kept bothering me.

Don't watch this movie. It'll give you nightmares. Read the book instead.

The movie lighting, background visual is very good, but the story/plot is very confusing and doesn't seem to have much of explained and the character design is very ugly and creepy and it fell into uncanny valley, but at least the character is very funny especially edward and his adoptive dad