Jungle2Jungle - 1/2*

Jungle2Jungle is a rather bland, humorless comedy. Tim Allen is Michael, a workaholic commodities broker in New York. Fourteen years ago, his wife (JoBeth Williams) left him to work in the Amazon. Now, Michael is engaged to a beautiful, but brainless fashion designer (Lolita Davidovich), and must seek out his wife to finalize their divorce. When he does find her, she has a surprise: their son, Mimisiku (Sam Huntington), raised with the tribal natives for thirteen years. The tribal chief sends Mimisiku back with his father to retrieve fire from the Statue of Liberty, as part of a manhood rite. But can the boy from the Amazon jungle adapt to the jungle of New York? (Get the title? eh? eh?) Anyhow, once they get to the big city, they get embroiled in all kinds of nonsense, involving Michael’s partner (Martin Sheen), a Russian mob boss (David Ogden Stiers), and so forth. The setup and pacing of Jungle2Jungle is so overwhelmingly obvious that the humor is few and far between. There are some amusing moments with a blowgun, but anyone who’s seen the previews has observed the bulk of that. The cast is talented, but they can’t do anything with the insipid plot and pathetic screenplay. There is no comic energy in the film. It simply proceeds from one stagey set piece to another. The film isn’t really, really bad…but it sure isn’t good.

This entry was posted in 1997, Movie Reviews and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.