Some films, though made with the best of intentions, inevitably fall short of their own original aims. Others, even in the very moment of their conception know they are about to make a crock of shite and just roll with it. Congo, from 1995, is the most glorious example of a movie so bad it's a complete joy to watch. In the aftermath of Jurassic Park's original success, a mere few years before, Michael Creighton back catalogue became sought after source material for blockbuster movies. They spent 50 million dollars on Congo and it grossed three times that. I've never seen so much money spread so invisibly across a movie screen.
The story is a poor man's update of Rider Haggard, full of the usual egregious greed and casual racism about tribal Africa. As if the 19th century preoccupation with that continent as the source of the darkest primeaval proto civilisations, was still going strong well over a century later. Dr Karen Ross ( Laura Linney) has to go to the Congo to find out what happened to her fiancé, the latter's callous Father ( Joe Don Baker) pays for the trip on the proviso she comes back with mega diamonds. Meanwhile, Dr Peter Elliot (Dylan Welsh) wants to return his intelligent sign language trained ape Amy to the wild. The only way he can do this is if Herkemer Homolka ( Tim Curry ) a supposedly rich Rumanian philanthropist pays for it. Homolka wants to locate the diamond mines associated with the Lost City of Zinj. So far, so preposterous.
What can save a half bad movie is a script savvy enough to be self parodying, and actors who are willing to put their tongues firmly in their cheek, to send up both the film and their part in it. Fortunately, no one thought to do that here, so what you see in Congo is a movie almost completely devoid of self awareness and the parlous artistic territory it is travelling through.
The two chief joys of this movie are the assumed accents, primarily Tim Curry's Rumanian accent, which travels insecurely in and around the Balkans, briefly touches on Russia before coming back to its very wobbly east european failed state. When this ludicrous accent meets the inane script you occasionally have brilliant moments of collision. They arrive in the ruins of Zinj which appear to have columns and columns of hieroglyphs written over the walls. By the next morning Tim Curry emerges from his tent ' U know do's Eero glps we saw on du walls, I ave translated dem all' If I were being charitable I'd say Curry was the only one who knew what he was doing here, but.......?
In the dodgy accent department he is not alone. We have Captain Monroe Kelly (Ernie Hudson) , a mercenary known as 'the great white hunter' who 'also happens to be black'. The black American actor, Ernie Hudson, who was strangely thought to be an excellent casting choice. This wasn't an early precursor of 'blind' casting, its just dumb.
Hudson plays it straight faced, without any sense of how weirdly inappropriate it feels. Not a glimmer of irony, for the entire length of the movie. Using the sort of upper class English accent only Hollywood could think was authentic. Its cadences on more than a few occasions landing back on the wrong side of the Atlantic. In one sticky moment of crisis in the movie, he utters in plummy posh tones - 'first we must locate our comrades, then the ape, before we even consider leaving'. As if they should sit down for tea and sandwiches then decide what to do, before the approaching mad gorillas eviscerate them. Lets not go into the mad gorillas, not right now, eh? Oh, this is so inspirational. Its a truly terrible movie, played as if unblemished by shame, it so transcends itself that it becomes tolerably good.
CARROT REVIEW - 6/8 ( Trash Elevated Score )
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