Touches You

A Masterpiece!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Chimpanzee (2012): Dir: Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield / Narrator: Tim Allen: The best Disney Nature documentary since Earth, and presents an opportunity to highlight wildlife that is threatened due to poaching and habitat loss. It begins with stunning shots of African jungle including heavy fog blanketing the trees in the morning. It regards a clan of thirty plus chimps but focuses on Oscar, a curious baby chimp who depends on his mother. One of the strength of the film is how viewers can relate to much of what these creatures are dealing with. Oscar observes as his mother uses rocks to crack nuts, but often his attempts lead to some of the film's amusing moments. Another interesting moment arrives when they bend smalls branches to form a bed. Suspense occurs when a band of rival chimps invade, led by Scar. If memory serves correctly, that was the name of one of the lions in African Cats as well. Perhaps it is a popular name amongst wildlife as oppose to Bill, Tim or Satan. Oscar's mother becomes injured during one of these raids and they become separated. This leads to Oscar's mother becoming fast food to a leopard. Oscar is pretty much rejected from other female chimps but finds refuge in the most unlikely place. The leader, Freddy adopts him. With this responsibility he also must be watchful of Scar. That isn't all roses either since Scar is under threat by rivals who wish to replace him as leader as well as the ever looming presence of leopards. The jungle photography is stunning and backs up a message of motherhood, bonding, friendship, and companionship in the unlikeliest places. Score: 10 / 10

The only thing keeping this movie up is the subject matter. No matter what watching this you will enjoy the up close relationship that is developed throughout between the Chimpanzees and the audience. The downfall of the documentary is in the narration. Unfortunately, Tim Allen was a complete flop. If you love nature docs and love David Attenborough and other natural world docs that feature a narrator that is able to tune in to the documentary and thereby have the audience fully enticed and watching with awe and excitement. Instead of this, you are left feeling is this a joke? The side narration 'giving the chimps a voice' was at first, intriguing... I wanted to see how Allen would go with it. Sadly... He didn't - Instead he sounded like he didn't want to be reading out the script he had been given. Which leaves the viewer not buying it. I just can't believe no one listened through and thought it didn't sound right! Anybody could have sounded better than that! Allen had no enthusiasm except possibly when he was talking about tools.BUT the subject matter is the key. If you have children then I'm sure it will be a nice close up look at nature for them. However, because it is aimed at children it has seemingly been dumbed down. This is an unfortunate inevitability when producing documentaries for children. I would not recommend paying to see this in the cinema. Instead watch some David Attenborough, or wait for 'Chimpanzee' to come on TV.

ChimpanzeeThe wild can be a dangerous place for a chimpanzee. Mostly because tire swings in their natural form are attached to speeding vehicles.Fortunately, there are no SUVs for the primates in this documentary to be pinned under.When his mother is killed in a territorial skirmish with a rival tribe lead by the cruel Scar, a young chimp named Oscar must learn to survive on his own.Lonely and emaciated, Oscar struggles to retain the survival lessons that his mother instilled in him, but to no avail.Luckily, an unpredictable bachelor in the tribe does something completely unexpected and adopts the orphaned ape as his own.Narrated by Tim Allen, this Disney nature documentary features fantastic up-close footage of life amongst our relatives, paying particularly close attention to how their empathy apes our own.However, in cases like this, I always thought that guardianship went to the monkey's uncle. (Yellow Light)vidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

Beautifully photographed almost documentary. Takes liberties for a documentary. The Chimpanzees are given names. (Why are the bad guys in Disney jungle films always named Scar?) The Tim Allen narration attempts to convey the chimps thoughts, maybe they were thinking about something else? It's told from the point of view of the "good" Chimps. Perhaps the tree monkeys didn't find them so good when they hunted them in their tree home, caught one and ripped it apart for a meat meal. The violence is glossed over so not to shock the younger viewers.As you would expect from a Disney Nature film, it's good family entertainment. The over the end credits showing the production crew would make for another excellent documentary.