Themes: Monkeys, Survival in the Wilderness, Obsessive Quests
Main Cast: Dylan Walsh, Laura Linney, Ernie Hudson, Tim Curry, Grant Heslov
Release Year: 1995
Country: US
Run Time: 108 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
Good gorillas meet bad gorillas while human beings search for treasure in this jungle advnture saga. R.B. Travis (Joe Don Baker) is the ruthless head of Travi-Com, a telecommunications firm on the cusp of a major breakthrough in laser communications technology. However, Travis needs diamonds to finish the project, so he sends a group of men to Zaire, where he's told that a large supply of the gems can be easily found. When the men go missing, Travis sends his trusted assistant Karen Ross (Laura Linney), a one-time CIA associate, into the jungle to find both his staff and the jewels. Hoping to keep her mission a secret, Karen travels to Zaire in the company of Peter (Dylan Walsh), a researcher on primate development who is hoping to return Amy, a gorilla who has been taught sign language and can "speak" English with the help of a glove-controlled computer device. Also travelling with them is Herkermer (Tim Curry), a Romanian with a secret agenda: he's convinced that Amy can guide him to the Lost City of Zinj, where he believes that King Solomon's Mines are located. Upon arrival, the group is met by Monroe Kelly (Ernie Hudson), a self-described "great white hunter who happens to be black," and they discover that the jungle holds a menace that they weren't counting on: a tribe of bloodthirsty gray gorillas. Congo was based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Joe Don Baker - R.B. Travis; David Anthony - Gorilla; Jimmy Buffett - 727 pilot; Bruce Campbell - Charles Travis; Peter Anthony Elliott - Gorilla; John Hawkes - Bob Driscol; Peter Jason - Mr Janus; Nicholas Kadi - Gorilla; James Karen - College President; William John Murphy - Transport Worker; Taylor Nichols - Jeffrey Weems; Stuart Pankin - Boyd; Joe Pantoliano; James Paradise - Transport Worker; Romy Rosemont - Eleanor Romy's Assistant; Carolyn Seymour - Eleanor Romy; Philip Tan - Gorilla; Mary Ellen Trainor - Moira; Joel Weiss - Travicom Employee; Lawrence T. Wrentz - Arliss Wender; Thom Barry - Samahani; John Cameron - Gorilla; Kathleen Connors - Sally
Credit
Richard Holland - Art Director, Michael Backes - Associate Producer, Paul Deason - Associate Producer, Allison Cowitt - Casting, Mike Fenton - Casting, Marilyn Matthews - Costume Designer, Katterli A. Frauenfelder - First Assistant Director, Mark Cotone - First Assistant Director, Frank Marshall - Director, Anne V. Coates - Editor, Frank Marshall - Executive Producer, Frank Yablans - Executive Producer, Jerry Goldsmith - Composer (Music Score), J. Michael Riva - Production Designer, Allen Daviau - Cinematographer, Kathleen Kennedy - Producer, Sam Mercer - Producer, Lisa Fischer - Set Designer, Ronald Judkins - Set Designer, Industrial Light & Magic - Special Effects, Sam Winston - Special Effects, Robert "Bobby Z" Zajonc - Stunts, Scott Farrar - Supervisor/Manager, Michael Lantieri - Supervisor/Manager, Tom C. Peitzman - Supervisor/Manager, John Patrick Shanley - Screenwriter, Michael Crichton - Book Author, Robert "Bobby Z" Zajonc - Pilot
Ernie Hudson as Captain Munro Kelly : The "Great White Hunter" and mercenary.
Lorene Noh & Misty Rosas, and the voice of Shayna Fox as Amy: Amy is a female mountain gorilla, born in the Virunga region, who is studied by Peter in the United States. She likes to draw scenes from her dreams, in which the Lost City of Zinj often appears.
Tim Curry as Herkermer Homolka: An eccentric rich man from Romania who offers to finance the expedition. He explains this action presenting himself as a philanthropist, but it is soon revealed that his real aim is to find the mythical Lost City of Zinj, where he lost another expedition some years ago.
Grant Heslov as Richard: Peter's assistant and friend.
Joe Don Baker R. B. Travis: TraviCom CEO and Karen's Boss. He wants to find the diamond mines to finance and expand his satellite technologies.
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Kahega: Monroe's guide and leader of the African porters in the expedition.
This section may require copy-editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling. You can assist by editing it now. (May 2009)
There are significant differences between the book and movie:
The characters Homolka and Richard, are not in the book.
Dr. Karen Ross and her aims were greatly changed in the film version. In the book, she is a cold-blooded business woman who wants to find the diamond mines for industrial purposes, more or less like Travis or Homolka in the film version. In the movie Ross is searching for her boyfriend, lost with the first expedition.
In the novel, the company that Karen works for is called Earth Resources Technology Services, Inc. or ERTS, while in the film, the company is called TraviCom.
Dr. Ross does not destroy the communications satellite in the book.
In the book, the catatonic survivor of the first expedition doesn't wake up and die after seeing Amy. He has a reaction to Peter's gorilla smell but never recovers consciousness. Karen says that she will tell his position to the ERTS staff before leaving him in the African village, in order to recover and bring him later to a hospital.
The gorillas in the book kill using stone paddles. The stone paddles are not present in the film
The book contained a competing faction known as the Consortium. This group included investors from Japan, Germany and other foreign nations also looking for King Solomon's Mines. This element was not present in the film.
The book has an epilogue describing Amy's behavior after returning to the wild, teaching her own young sign language, which is not mentioned in the film.
Munro is white African in the book. The transliterated joke in the movie is that Munro is their "great white hunter" that happens to be black.
The aforementioned character's full name in the book was "Charles Munro", whereas in the movie it is "Munro Kelly."
The character Kahega lives in the book, while in the film he is killed by the gray gorillas.
The gorillas attacked the camp repeatedly in the book whereas the attack in the film only lasted for a few minutes.
The endings differed greatly between the film and the book. The crashed plane discovered by the group in the book belonged to the Consortium, not another TraviCom expedition. Additionally in the book the group suffered an attack by a local native cannibal tribe before they could escape, using the crashed plane as shelter.
In the film, the only diamond recovered was thrown away; in the book, Munro completes a sale of a small collection of blue diamonds.
In the film, the diamonds are used for an optical communications array that happens to double as a laser based portable weapon but in the book they were all about semiconductor properties.
In the film, Amy the gorilla uses a voice box to translate her signing, but in the novel, Peter Elliott translates for her.
Reception
Box office
Congo opened with a weekend total of $24,642,539, eventually going on to gross $152,022,101 worldwide ($81,022,101 domestic) theatrically versus a $50,000,000 budget. The critical reaction was less successful.
Critics
Roger Ebert said that Congo is a splendid example of a genre no longer much in fashion, the jungle adventure story. He gave it 3 out of 4 stars. Most critics called it a theme park that can't decide whether it's a spoof or a thriller. Rotten Tomatoes gave it an aggregate rating of 22% based on 41 reviews.[2]
A significant cause of disappointment among fans was that the "gorillas" were costumes and puppets[1], whereas the 1993 film Jurassic Park had familiarized audiences with CG dinosaurs. CGI was originally planned for the grays,[citation needed] but the technology had not yet been developed to the point where realistic hair could be created. While smooth skinned dinosaurs were possible, hairy apes would have looked inappropriately cartoonish. Therefore, animatronics, masks and puppetry had to be used.
The film has garnered a cult following in the years since its release, from fans who appreciate the adaptation despite its divergence from the source material. One of the reasons the film was slated in 1995 was because it came out in the shadow of "Jurassic Park," a much more high-profile Michael Crichton adaptation; had it been released before or significantly after, it probably would have faced less severe criticism.
The "new millennium culture blog" Charge Shot!!! has developed a movie rating system based on Congo known as the "Congo Movie Rating System" in which a movie is rated based on its relative enjoyability to Congo, Congo itself being worth a single Congo.[3]
