kev-fellows
Classic cult movie that everyone remembers as a teenager. My memory of the film still makes me laugh and have not seen it for 30 years or so! I wonder what I would think if I watched it again now aged 45. It's playground humour will not appeal to everybody, but anyone one who hasn't seen it should give it a go. It will entertain anybody who finds VIZ funny or people who giggle when they fart in a lift and then leave at the next floor, or people who get into a lift just to fart and then leave on the same floor! The animation is very good for it's time and it is what it is. Great.
Joe Stemme
Odd that just a couple of years before the Bo Derek soft-core sex romp version of TARZAN, that this French animated version got into so much controversy that it virtually disappeared upon arrival to these shores. Not that an under-appreciated classic was being unfairly smited, but there have been far worse spoofs of "sacred" texts. The US version is shorter and has a few familiar voices such as John Belushi, Chris Guest and Bill Murray on the voice track, but it's the son of the original 1932's film adaptation, Johnny Weissmuller Jr., who voices "Tarzoon" (the censored new name in this version). Weissmuller does a credible job, but his participation further annoyed the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. There are some amusing moments, both R and NC-17 rated, to be had in the film, but the jokes are mostly obvious and it is too long-winded to sustain momentum. The US version also uses the annoying technique of playing the sound backwards every time the word "Tarzan" is spoken (they even blur out the T-word when written). There is an insanely catchy tune by an army of, ahem, Phallic Soldiers towards the end which stuck in my head for weeks. Also, a witty breaking the fourth wall running gag on Animated Characters is pretty amusing.
world_of_weird
Not quite awful but very far from good, this odd little movie wears out its welcome a lot sooner than you might imagine. It's like one of those sub-standard VIZ clones that cluttered up newsagent's shelves from the late eighties onward come to life, with a screenplay apparently written by an unreconstructed nightclub comedian who aims for the lowest common denominator and hits his target every time. It might be funny to see marching genitalia, a monkey poking a woman's naked breasts or the Tarzan character getting his penis stretched to impossible lengths the first couple of times, but that's really all the film has going for it in the humour department. A shame, because the animation is actually pretty good, and whoever came up with the rich soundtrack score deserved to see his work put to better use. The film achieved a minor cult following in the early days of home video in England due to its explicit (for the time) subject matter and the novelty value of seeing cute characters behaving badly.
Macholic
Shame comes home and find his mate, June, abducted by...well..peckers! His ape explains in graphic details how June was aroused and abducted by the penises and demonstrated how it...well...spanked the monkey when the peckers aroused June. Lotsa slapstick, politically incorrect humor, not just about sex, but also about colonization ("Africa - the continent where life is spun by a thinner thread than other places"). The animation is fluent and rich, the soundtrack is rock'nrolling and this is really a bellylaugh-a-minute movie. Some people are likely to find the movie quite provocative but this is better natured than Fritz the Cat, which on occation turned quite violent without the redeeming humor, but there is certainly a kinship. The humor occationally gets quite elephantine, quite literary! Highly entertaining. 7/10
AD
