gorf Mighty Joe Young is a safer, more family friendly version of King Kong (which is a masterpiece and one of the best action/adventure movies of all time).Mr. Joe Young is a more likeable and heroic character than the original King Kong. Yes, we feel sorry when Kong is shot to death at the end, but we never doubt that it was the right thing to do. He's a dangerous animal. It's just like the real-life killing of the gorilla Harambe. From beginning to end, King Kong is killing people left and right. Joe Young on the other hand is a more gentle gorilla. The special effects are so good you almost forget it's a stop motion puppet, it's like you're watching a real gorilla get abused. It could make a grown man cry.King Kong is a violent movie. Full of people getting killed scary dinosaurs. Kong stomps people to death. The only violence in Mighty Joe Young is against stop motion lions, and it's all pretty mild.While there's no nudity or sex scenes in King Kong, the scene where King Kong tears off pieces of Fay Wray's dress is a bit uncomfortable. You can oftentimes smell the unmistakeable pervy pre-code stench. Mighty Joe Young has none of that.It's like Mighty Joe Young was Merian C. Cooper "anti-King Kong" movie:1. We have to wait a long time before Kong appears. Joe Young is there right at the beginning.2. King Kong is a stereotypical, wild and horny gorilla who kidnaps women. Joe Young is the female characters pet.3. The male lead in King Kong is a chauvinistic "girls drool" character. The one in Mighty Joe Young is polite and chivalrous.4. King Kong is put in chains. Joe Young performs without chains.5. King Kong kidnaps a human and climbs up a building with her. Joe Young climbs up a building to save a human.6. King Kong dies. Joe Young lives.And while it's a lighter movie than King Kong, the big action scene at the Children's Home at the end of the movie is breath-taking, and feels more real than anything I've seen in a modern CGI movie. The only negative thing about this movie is that the girl says "Joe" a lot. It's a bit like the movie "Shane", where the main character's name is mentioned almost every minute.Mighty Joe Young isn't as good as King Kong from 1933, but it's a better choice if your kids want to watch a movie about giant primates.

Hitchcoc The 1940's were big on gorillas. They were mysterious creatures to most people, having a human-like element, but with enormous power. Hence, the popularity of King Kong. In this one, a young woman finds an enormous ape. He is taken from his digs to America, where he becomes an attraction. The girl is in love with the producer and so she allows Joe (which he is named and "Young," which is the girls last name) to continue to perform. Unfortunately, he is kept caged up. Everyone considers him a danger. Eventually, an event occurs where some drunks feed him alcohol and get him riled up with fire. He goes on a rampage and is sentenced to death. This leads to an exciting conclusion which is strictly Hollywood. Great fun. Launched a sequel which I've never seen.

Claudio Carvalho In Africa, the girl Jill Young trades a baby gorilla with two natives and raises the animal. Twelve years later, the talkative and persuasive promoter Max O'Hara (Robert Armstrong) organizes a safari to Africa with the Oklahoma cowboy Gregg (Ben Johnson) to bring attractions to his new night-club in Hollywood. They capture several lions and out of blue, they see a huge gorilla nearby their camping and they try to capture the animal. However, the teenager Jill Young (Terry Moore) stops the men that intended to kill her gorilla. Max seduces Jill with a fancy life in Hollywood and she signs a contract with him where the gorilla Joseph "Joe" Young would be the lead attraction. Soon she realizes that her dream is a nightmare to Joe and she asks Max to return to Africa. However he persuades her to stay a little longer in the show business. But when three alcoholic costumers give booze to Joe, the gorilla destroys the spot and is sentenced by the justice to be sacrificed. Will Jill, Gregg and Max succeed in saving Joe?"Mighty Joe Young" is a surprisingly excellent movie, with a story that entwines drama, romance and adventure and with awesome special effects for a 1949 movie. I bought this DVD a couple of years ago, but I was expecting a lame rip-off of King Kong based on the awful Brazilian title. However, the plot is engaging, with lots of emotions and many plot points and Joe's runaway is spectacular. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Monstro de um Mundo Perdido" ("Monster of a Lost World")

flapdoodle64 This film was released in 1949, one year prior to the beginning of the scifi/monster boom of the 1950's. In terms of genre descriptions, it is hard to pigeonhole MJY...like Disney's 'Dumbo' (1941) it is a bittersweet story of a persecuted and exploited performing animal...and like Disney's 'Song of the South' (1946) it successfully integrates animated images with footage of living performers. But I also think that the classic 1946 Cocteau version of 'Beauty and the Beast' is also an antecedent.There is a tendency among modern viewers to judge special effects from the basis of how closely they approximate the way actual film of impossible happenings would appear. Yet we do not commonly judge paintings and sculpture by a standard of photorealism. With BATB and MJY, the special effects should instead be judged by how they convey mood, personality, theme, and how they tell the story.Not only are the stop-motion-animation techniques in MJY a quantum leap from the 1933 classic King Kong, they exceed most of what Harryhausen would achieve in later projects. I make this extraordinary statement because although the Harryhausen's Technicolor mythological films are indeed spectacular, none of his later beasts conveys a personality as believable and sympathetic as that of Mighty Joe Young.In 'Citizen Kane,' RKO deconstructed the agonized materialistic persona of pre-war America. In 'Mighty Joe Young,' RKO breathed heart and soul into a puppet, reconstructing the shattered fragments of the post-war America into a form of innocence and empathy.Besides being an effective fairy tale, MJY is an incisive social satire, with the nightclub scenes being effectively a tableau of the seven deadly sins of man, with an emphasis on greed.Robert Armstrong has a couple goofy moments where comedy relief is attempted, and the sequence with him riding the mule keeps me from giving this film a '10,' but this is a small flaw, and 1949 audiences probably thought it was funny.Terri Moore has a strange face, but she is compelling and believable, and her earnestness makes us believe in Joe even more. I don't want to spoil the ending, but after seeing this film, I felt as though I, and every other viewer, had been given a very special Valentine.