Monkeys, gorillas and chimps–oh my! With their madness antics, cognitive smarts and full-on flavor, they’ve made us laugh, scream and even shed a tear, perhaps because–dare we point out–they remind us of hmmm?
Although they comprise very different species, we’ve conveniently lumped these intuitive actors onto one list, giving a shout out to their big screen debuts, now that Space Chimps has leapt onto this month’s quirky ‘hero movie’ line-up.
The lively animated Space Chimps charts the adventures of a simian slacker, Ham III–the grandson of the first chimpanzee in space–on his way to becoming a hero, when a $5 billion Space Agency probe disappears into an intergalactic wormhole, and they recruit him to help them retrieve the wayward craft.
Yeah, there were several runners-up of hairy celebs who’ve more than left their celebrity mark in films such as: Every Which Way But Loose, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moto X Kids, 28 Days Later, to name a few. And, admittedly, it’s all monkey business that determined which Bubbles’ cousins made it our cuts.
Nonetheless, click through our list of movie favorites with “12 Monkeys” we think you should watch:
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Never kiss and tell…
1. Planet of the Apes (1968)
We’re certainly relieved there’s no tongue action, but let’s face it, this charged moment might’ve been one of Charlton Heston‘s and movie history’s best: when anguished astronaut George Taylor and level-headed, Zira (Kim Hunter)–who has a tender spot and empathy for the exotic–lightly lock lips….as friends. This futuristic look at evolution spun on itself digs into a terrifying version of our planet, where a time-warped man wakes up to find apes are the rulers, and man is beast.
Why She Ruled: Zira’s haughty British accent, inquisitive nature, and innate draw to the ‘vulgar’ humans made all of us fall in love with her.
Monkeymeter: 5 out of 5 stars
*Editor’s note: Make sure to rent and watch Bowling for Columbine to the very end, as part two of a mind-blowing Heston double feature night…you’ll see!
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Isn’t he a cutie-wootie??
2. Mighty Joe Young (1998)
See what happens when you move to L.A. and get famous? Perhaps a premonition for the downward spiral that celeb culture has charted–especially for those who are a little different form the rest–Joe is a victim of his own celebrity. Jill (Charlize Theron) and zoologist Gregg (Bill Paxton) think that moving Joe from the Pangani mountains and giving him a passport to the states will rescue him from human predators–oh, how contraire. It’s a little bit of the Britney‘s story, set in the animal kingdom.
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Why He Ruled: His cute mono-brow, intuitive smarts and over-protectiveness of Jill rendered Joe a distinguished knight.
Monkeymeter: 3 out of 5 stars
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The original space chimp…
3. Project X (1987)
Less than a year after Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, when Matthew Broderick‘s reluctant cohort in mischief was Alan Ruck‘s Cameron, comes Broderick as military would-be pilot Jimmy Garrett and willing cohort Helen Hunt (obviously not pictured) to help Virgil (pictured) played by the understated, sign-language expert chimp-actor Willie. The plot unfolds as Jimmy discovers a dastardly government plot that the chimps are trained to operate flight simulators, and then they’re exposed to lethal doses of radiation to test how that might affect human pilots during the instance of a nuclear war. Jimmy comes to the rescue on a newfound, dangerous mission to protect his gifted hairy friend.
Why He Ruled: Virgil mastered sign language–enough said.
Monkeymeter: 4 out of 5 stars
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Where’s the booty…
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)
This third installment of the pirate-booty making franchise features heroes Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) who are allied with Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and his sharp-toothed, simian side-kick, Jack, in a desperate quest to free the swishy Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from his mind-blowing trap in Davy Jones Locker. Meanwhile, the terrorizing ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman–under the East India Trading Company’s control–wreaks havoc across the Seven Seas with their immortal powers. And like the rest of the ghost crew, the mischievous Jack is cursed, turning undead in lunar light and bestowed with indestructibility. Cool.
Why He/She Ruled: We learned that two capuchin monkeys actually played the role of Captain Barbossa’s faithful pet. Tara is a 10-year-old female monkey and Levi is an 8-year-old male. As to pulling off the dual gender thing as a monkey actor–kudos!
Monkeymeter: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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Does second base count?
5. King Kong (1976)
Half-erotica, half-thriller, pure ’70s Kongsploitation, this Jessica Lange starrer has too many layers to address; but is a guilty pleasure classic. The ever-writhing, spoiled, sexified Dwan–Kong’s love interest–portrayed by Lange could feed a film theorist’s thesis on ‘otherness’ vis-à-vis Anglo womanhood, considered the world’s most precious commodity. But that’s neither her nor there in this fluff piece! Instead, stop to imagine it’s 1975, and the hyper-sexual direction given to the callow, blonde ingénue onset: “You’re hot; sizzling on the dance floor Jessica–give us more, more more!”
Why He Ruled: This ladies-man Kong is a standout in his legacy–too provocative to even show him here. Just watch the movie. Kong and Lange as co-stars are hauntingly unforgettable.
Monkeymeter: 4 out of 5 stars
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Never kiss and tell…
6. Gorillas in the Mist (1988)
Nominated for five Academy Awards, this tear-jerker of an adventure biopic story focuses itself on anthropologist Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver)–a private obsessive, romantic figure, who became an expert in her field–and centers around the extensive work she accomplished with a band of fearsome gorillas, until her murder in Rwanda in 1985. It’s a story of poacher vs. nature, and the nurturer who did her best to reverse the equation.
Why It Ruled: Aww. Is it just us, or is there something eerily uncanny about the similarity of hairdos in this picture–perhaps underlying that we’re not all that different from our furry friends. That’s exactly the point of bringing to the spotlight these misty gorillas.
Monkeymeter: 4 out of 5 stars
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Woman’s best friend…
7. The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981)
Starring Lily Tomlin and Charles Grodin, this subversive family classic centers on a nearly robotic, suburban housewife, Pat, who approaches her daily-grind life, screaming kids and a self-involved peppy ad-exec husband with a constant plastered smile as she fades into the background…literally…and soon becomes known as the “incredible shrinking woman” to her neighbors, when doctors and experts alike can’t quite explain, save blaming a bizarre mix of chemicals, why she’s losing inches and pounds by the day. Soon, Pat becomes an experiment at a shady laboratory, promising her hope, where her only friend who can save her from their clutches, arrives in the form of–you guessed it, an ape.
Why It Ruled: The perhaps the most fake man-suited ape you’ve seen in a movie, the noise-making, chest-beating gorilla fits in with the order of Pat’s upside-down, mockery of a universe. Cheesy and just right–it is a 1981 comedy after all!
Monkeymeter: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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Is Lisa Marie shooting today?..
8. Planet of the Apes (2001)
If Mr. and Mrs. Smith begat ‘Brangelina’, well then Planet ’01 begat ‘Timhel’, perhaps not as popular and sexy of a moniker, but the relationship that shocked Tim Burton fans who were bedazzled for years by his striking muse, Lisa Marie–and could barely believe that the angular Helena would be transitioning into the part of the new Burtonian muse…although Lisa Marie was also on set. Um, we weren’t there, so we have no idea what happened, but, we’re sure there was some real primal struggle onset? Speaking of which, the story surrounds an American pilot Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg), stranded in a brutal, upside-down world-where intelligent apes are in charge, and humans scavenge for subsistence, hunted and enslaved by the tyrannical primates. Leo attracts the attention of the politically well-connected ape Ari (Bonham Carter), a human rights activist and soon becomes a catalyst for revolutionary social change.
Why She Ruled: Bonham Carter‘s Ari utters, “It’s disgusting how we treat the humans,” without a shred of irony read in her ape-mask. A classy, smartly dressed and hair-styled bohemian ape, Ari brought introspection to the film–and to Bonham-Carter‘s personal and professional life, a ticket to Hollywood. Let’s not be too cynical, baby Indiana Rose Burton owes her ’07 arrival to Ari’s existence in Planet ’01.
Monkeymeter: 3 out of 5 stars
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Where are they now?..
9. The Barefoot Executive (1968)
One of our personal favorite guilty pleasures, this Disney flashback Kurt Russell teen starrer centers itself on a tapped-out, corporate climbing, Vespa-riding, young TV biz exec wannabe who discovers genius in the neighbor’s pet chimp, Raffles, whom his girlfriend is pet-sitting. Steven begrudgingly befriends Raffles at first, until he discovers and comes to rely upon the chimp’s intuitive higher intelligence to monitor TV shows and ultimately gage their ratings potential.
Why He Ruled: It’s what just about everybody caught in office culture wants: an adorable, lively, quirky chimp you can watch TV and swig a beer with, who can help you climb the slippery rungs of the corporate ladder, from behind-the-scenes.
Monkeymeter: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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A classier Kong…
10. King Kong (2005)
This $218 million Peter Jackson remake of the classic ape story was certainly worth its five ton weight in box office glory. Set in 1933, the pic stars Naomi Watts as a vaudeville actress Ann Darrow–spiraling alongside the depression–who finds a gig onboard a Singapore-bound tramp steamer, working for wily filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) in the hopes of completing his travelogue/action film. Swerving to avoid icebergs, the crew and Ann soon finds themselves on a prehistoric island where a misunderstood, anti-social Kong rules the day while fending of dinosaurs. Ann is the first ‘being’ he meets who can mellow him out enough to make him chuckle.
Why He Ruled: Plain and simply, between his wordless expressionist acting and channeling pure Ice Capades bliss in “Central Park’s” skating rink with his beloved playmate Ann, actor Andy Serkis‘ green screen constructed, underrated Kong deserved an Oscar nom.
Monkeymeter: 5 out of 5 stars
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Ice ice monkey…
11. MVP: Most Valuable Primate (2000)
Hockey ace, Steven and his kid sister Tara, the new kids on the block, have a tough time acclimating to their climate change, having relocated from California to Canada.
Furthermore, Steven’s new hockey team would rather fight than hit the puck. However, everything changes for the better when they come across a highly communicative chimp named Jack who not only knows sign language, but also has one helluva slap shot.
Why He Ruled: For true chimp movie fans, this one scores! To see Jack’s crafty maneuvers on ice, before he reveals his million-dollar smile could make a hockey fan out of anyone.
Monkeymeter: 4 out of 5 stars
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A presidential feeding…
11. Bedtime for Bonzo (1951)
Our former president, Ronald Reagan, plays Peter Boyd, a psychology professor whose reputation is sullied by the fact that his father was a convict. To prove that environment rather than heredity dictates a man’s personality, he uses Bonzo the chimp to test out his theories–which seems to work fine until Bonzo is accused of robbery.
Why He Ruled: Say all you want about the shenanigans or positives that the legacy of Reaganomics left upon us, Bonzo left us with an indelible image that We The People will never forget.
Monkeymeter: 3.5 out of 5 stars
