Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The acting in this movie is really good.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

this was better than most monkey movies i have seen and i've seen a lot of them. i think monkey movies are usually pretty low-brow (with the exception of the excellent 'Toby Tyler'), but i still have a tendency to like them anyhow. i even like the 'Bonzo' monkey movies with Ronald Reagan.'Monkey Summer', or whatever it is, is more serious and intellectually ambitious than monkey movies usually are. this doesn't always work in it's favor, but it does get you to take it more seriously as film making than other monkey films. for one thing, because it is more serious story telling and actually has a real plot (monkey movies usually don't), it can be a little slow moving at times. there are some funny moments of monkey mayhem, monkeys trashing houses, having pillow fights, and monkeys drinking bootleg to get drunk, just not enough of them. the action mostly concentrates on the story of the kid who wants to catch the monkeys. the 'Monkey's Uncle' was a lot more brainless than this, but it was more fun to watch and had more monkey antics.the acting is good in this movie, the script is often thoughtful and kind of moving in a sincere way, and the feel for it's historical period is quite good. the scene where the monkey's owner drives up in a turn of the century auto is engaging. it was also nice to see the little girl who played the role in the very good TV movie adaptation of 'A Wrinkle in Time'. she's quite good here.also let me clear up one thing. this movie was picked up and distributed by Disney but was not actually produced by the company. it was produced by Michael Anderson in Canada with another film company. Disney's name is on the DVD package but not actually on the film itself. no matter. this film has all the elements of your typical Disney flick and is very wholesome and G-rated (with the exception of drunken monkeys, but hey, 'Dumbo' had a drunken elephant).i also forgot to add that these ain't monkeys. they are chimps. a monkey ain't a chimp and a chimp ain't a monkey. there IS a difference. why do Hollyweird and the mooovies keep making that mistake.

Summer of the Monkeys is a great movie. It's excellent for children watching these cute monkeys and see a boy go crazy over them. It's young for the kids and for the adults, they can pick out the deeper meaning of a boy struggling through his adolescent years. It's the story of a young boy who wants a pony and will do anything for one. He tried to work at his grandpa's store but chores get in the way too much. He's soon punished for not watching his sister, who has a leg problem and needs an operation and is not permitted to go to his grandpas. Now, he can't buy the pony he wanted. He runs away from home and only his grandpa can talk him back. A wanted poster is out for the monkeys and Jay's enemies try to go kill them. Jay foils there trap and they hate him for it. They beat him up and Jay's friend who is a hermit scares the boys away and protects Jay. But after a storm that destroys many things, including the death of his friend, Jay learns the meaning of selflessness. This is a great movie for everyone and I really liked it. I would recommend it for a good movie for the family.

This is a well acted & directed adaptation of Wilson Rawls "Summer of the Monkeys". A truly great movie for kids and a book that ought to be read too, along with Rawls award winning, "Where the Red Fern Grows".Good summer fare for kids out of school for the summer and entertaing for adults too.

At first I thought this would be a standard boy-meets-pet movie. Indeed, in the first part, you see many typical elements of that type of movie : it's the beginning of summer vacations, young Jay wants to work at his grandfather's general store to buy a pony for himself but he can't because he has to work on the family farm. And then there's his sister who has an handicapped leg, and an the old hermit who shoots everything he sees moving in the woods.But as the story evolves, you discover many profound characters and relationships : the old hermit is not exactly what you thought, the grandfather has many interesting conversations with his grandson and with Jay's mother (his own daughter). The relationship between Jay and his sister also develops into something not predictable at first.And of course, the chimps are there all along, which can only add comic as well as touching situations.I rented that movie mainly for my children, but all in all, I found many edifying lessons for myself in it.