Disney's thrilling 'Monkey Kingdom' an epic animal adventure
"Monkey Kingdom" a mere Walt Disney nature documentary?
This movie plays more like a simian version of "Game of Thrones."
A ruthless monarch with three sisters as his wives!
Slaves oppressed at the bottom of the social order!
Attacks by giant monsters!
Deadly wars between rival factions!
Nobody wears clothes!
"Monkey Kingdom" is no mere collection of pretty images with professorial information attached.
Nosireee. It's a full-throttle adventure photographed and edited - with close-ups, long-shots, inserts and reactions - just like a Hollywood narrative feature. But with real monkeys starring as themselves.
Directed by Disney veterans Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill, "Monkey Kingdom" takes place in the jungles of Sri Lanka where a community of toque macaque monkeys lives in a large stony structure named Castle Rock.
The rock is ruled by Raja, the iron-fisted alpha male who sits high atop the group's prized fig tree where the fruit is tastiest, and where his three snooty wives, called the Sisterhood, dine.
Down at the bottom with the lesser fruit belongs Maya, a member of the lowest social class and the soon-to-be Amazonian heroine of this story.
Yes, it's a real story, one about a working-class single mother struggling to protect and provide for her newborn son Kip (he resembles a cute little alien clinging to Mom's tummy) while the upper-class monkeys treat her with rudeness and contempt.
At least until Maya rises to the task of leading a revolt against the upper class (they really do eat cake!) and winds up saving her fellow macaques from starvation, attack and banishment.
Along the way, Maya and her mate Kumar the outsider (yes, the daring Maya went outside her social order for some jungle love) confront monster-sized creatures (monitors and leopards), stage a "Mission: Impossible" -like raid on a human town to get supplies and launch a thrilling counterattack against rival macaques and their scarred leader Lex to reclaim their treasured Castle Rock.
Seriously, this is a real movie-movie, far beyond anything imagined and executed by the seven previous Disney Nature documentaries.
"Monkey Kingdom" obviously cries out to be told as a thrilling bedtime adventure.
Yet, former "SNL" star Tina Fey delivers most of the voice-over narration in monotoned, NPR-ish seriousness, occasionally striking a note of humor that, while most welcome, still sounds less than spontaneous.
Nonetheless, what we witness in "Monkey Kingdom" is nothing less than amazing.
The moviemakers owe a big debt to Dr. Wolfgang Dittus, who studied macaques in Sri Lanka for nearly 50 years.
He knew this community of monkeys so well, he could tell filmmakers which ones had the personalities suitable for fitting into a storyline.
Also, because the monkeys were accustomed to having Dittus and other human researchers around, filmmakers had an easier time getting the monkeys to act naturally in front of cameras. (Stick around during the ending credits to see the filmmakers interacting with their "actors.")
Then, of course, the awe-inspiring images of this magical place are captured magnificently by director of photography Martyn Colbeck and his crew, with several slow-motion segments that allow our eyes to fully take in the beauty and grandness of these too-human-like creatures.
"Monkey Kingdom" is so magical, we even accept its Disney-esque ending in which Maya's Kumar ascends to the ruling rank of alpha male.
But beware, Kumar, for macaque alpha males hold onto power only for about three years before being unseated by a challenger.
That young Kip has a lean and hungry look about him.
“Monkey Kingdom”
★ ★ ★ ½
Narrated by: Tina Fey
Directed by: Mark Linfield, Alastair Fothergill
Other: A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated G. 81 minutes