Film #174 - Mighty Joe Young (1998)
Viewed June 23, 2006
Boy was I ready to dislike the remake of Mighty Joe Young. My every instinct told me that it couldn’t live up to the original. And it doesn’t. But it comes an awful lot closer than I expected and is a decent film in its own right.
The biggest problem with this remake is (as usual) where it strays form the original. The biggest change is the additiona of an actual villain. What made the original such a good story is that (like in the original King Kong) there isn’t really a bad guy. There’s some degree of thoughtlessness and misplaced ideas, but none of the characters actually wants to cause harm.
Other than that, the story parallels the original quite closely. The characters of Max O’Hara and Gregg are combined into Bill Paxton’s Gregg O’Hara and his goal for Joe is changed from show business to a nature preserve (in keeping with the changing attitude towards wild animals in the intervening years), but the basic motivations are the same. Jill’s origin and the film’s conclusion are altered as well, but mainly to fuel the villain’s subplot.
Paxton and Charlize Theron (who plays Jill) have good chemistry and he never comes off as a jerk, which would be easy to have happen with a character like his. She always comes off as the one being stubborn, which helps make her more sympathetic. The supporting cast is fine, but so bland as to be unnoticeable. Only the villains stand out and only because they seem so unneccessary.
The effects are quite strong, with the giant ape being particularly impressive. (I suppose that might be obvious, but as I saw with King Kong Lives, 12 years earlier, guys in ape suits didn’t look nearly as good.) Joe comes off as a real character, but never crosses the line into being human. It’s important for a film like Mighty Joe Young that Joe be an ape. It’s his natural reactions to his surroundings that drives the story and, thankfully, they are intact here.
The original Mighty Joe Young is kind of a “happier” King Kong. I was pleased to see that the updated version didn’t try to mess with that formula, instead it just tried to expand it (with mixed results). Still, it’s a solid effort and well worth watching, whether you are a fan of the original or not.