Congo (film)

Congo
File:Congo ver1.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Frank Marshall
Written by	John Patrick Shanley Michael Crichton (novel)
Produced by	Kathleen Kennedy Sam Mercer
Starring	Laura Linney Dylan Walsh Ernie Hudson Tim Curry Bruce Campbell
Cinematography	Allen Daviau
Edited by	Anne V. Coates
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Production company	Kennedy/Marshall
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	June 9, 1995 (1995-06-09)
Running time	109 minutes
Country	United States
Languages	English American Sign language Swahili
Budget	$50 million
Box office	$152,022,101

Congo is a 1995 film, based on the 1980 novel Congo by Michael Crichton. It was directed by Frank Marshall and stars Dylan Walsh, Laura Linney, Tim Curry, Ernie Hudson, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Grant Heslov and Joe Don Baker. The screenplay was written by John Patrick Shanley. The music was composed by Jerry Goldsmith.

Plot

The film begins with Charles Travis (Bruce Campbell), the ex-fiancé of Doctor Karen Ross (Laura Linney), going missing after testing a laser gun in a remote part of the Congo under the orders of TraviCom CEO R.B. Travis (Joe Don Baker). When Charles's crew is discovered dead, an enraged R.B. reveals that the purpose of exploring the Congo is to find the local diamond mines and expand his satellite technologies. Meanwhile, a young scientist named Peter Elliott (Dylan Walsh) has devised a way to communicate with gorillas through sign language. He has even invented a machine to give the gorillas a voice, using his own gorilla Amy (voiced by Shayna Fox) in his demonstration. However, Peter is concerned over the fact that Amy is constantly painting the same picture of an eye surrounded by trees. Peter figures out that she is painting a jungle and decides to return her to Africa, but his father is reluctant to fund the procedure. Peter is then approached by the Romanian philanthropist Herkermer Homolka (Tim Curry), who offers to fund the expedition. Karen, hoping to find Charles, joins Peter and provides additional funding for his trip.

Upon arriving in Africa, the group is guided by the "Great White Hunter" Captain Munro Kelly (Ernie Hudson). However, they are soon captured by the Congolese government and are confronted by a military leader who holds an aggressive tea party. The group boards another plane, but they are almost shot down and Peter contemplates calling off the expedition. The next day, they are met by members of a ghost tribe who claim they have seen a dead white man with the TraviCom logo on his clothes. The ghost tribe members lead the team to the man, who is a member of the original TraviCom expedition, and is not actually dead, but in a catatonic state. As they attempt to revive him, he catches a glimpse of Amy, and begins to scream uncontrollably, before coughing up blood and dying. The group heads upstream, where Homolka reveals that as a young man, he found a book in Soviet Georgia that contained a detailed drawing of the City of Zinj, where King Solomon is believed to have kept a diamond mine in. The drawing featured a peculiar decoration that resembled an open eye, the same eye that Amy has been painting. Homolka comes to the conclusion that Amy has been seeing Zinj in her dreams and that she will take the group there.

That night, the group is attacked by hippopotami and decide to continue their travels on foot. They later encounter a savage group of gorillas, which Amy persuades into leaving. The group finally discover the camp that Charles was stationed at as well as the lost city of Zinj. While searching the city, they come across the room of diamonds but are unable to leave. They also discover Charles's corpse in the temple. Before they are given time to mourn, they are ambushed by the guardians of the temple, a group of aged and angry gorillas, who kill most of the group, including Homolka. However, Amy arrives and protects the injured Peter from the gorillas, giving Karen enough time to load one of the diamonds into her own powerful laser gun and fend off the gorillas. Just then, a volcano explodes, giving the group time to escape as the obliging killer gorillas hop into the boiling lava. Upon escaping the collapsed city, Karen contacts R.B. and informs him that Charles is dead. However, she realizes that R.B. only values the diamonds and decides to use her laser gun to destroy the satellite keeping TraviCom alive. Amy gives Peter a flower and sets off into the wild with a group of silverback gorillas as the group floats off in a hot air balloon.

Cast

• Laura Linney as Doctor Karen Ross, a member of TraviCom who wishes to find her ex-fiancé lost in a previous expedition to the eastern Congo.
• Dylan Walsh Doctor Peter Elliott, a primatologist of Berkeley, California who wants to return his gorilla, Amy, to her birth place in the Virunga region of the Congo.
• Ernie Hudson as Captain Munro Kelly, the "Great White Hunter" and mercenary.
• Lorene Noh, Misty Rosas, and the voice of Shayna Fox as Amy, 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, the CEO of TraviCom 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.
• Bruce Campbell as Charles Travis: Karen's ex-fiance.

Differences from the book

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.
• In the novel, Peter Elliott and Amy join the expedition led by Karen Ross after the latter asks the earlier for consult. In the movie, it is the female scientist who joins Elliott and his associates.
• 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.
• While phisically different than ordinary gorillas, the Zinj apes in the novel aren't as monstrous in appearance as their movie counterpart.
• 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. Rotten Tomatoes gave it an aggregate rating of 22% based on 41 reviews.

A significant cause of disappointment among fans was that the "gorillas" were costumes and puppets, whereas the 1993 film Jurassic Park had familiarized audiences with CG dinosaurs. CGI was originally planned for the grays, 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. {{citation}}: Empty citation (help) 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. {{citation}}: Empty citation (help)

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.

The Nostalgia Critic reviewed Congo, criticizing its nonsensical plot and the obviously fake ape costumes, making fun of Tim Curry's Romanian accent, and admitting that he liked Bruce Campbell, Ernie Hudson, and an ape-zapper gun being in the movie.

Awards

Won 2 and nominated for a further 11 awards.

Wins

BMI Film & TV Awards:

• BMI Film Music Award (Jerry Goldsmith)

Sci-Fi Universe Magazine, USA:

• Best Supporting Actor in a Genre Motion Picture (Ernie Hudson)

Nominations

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA

• Best Director (Frank Marshall)
• Best Science Fiction Film (Paramount Pictures)
• Best Special Effects (Scott Farrar) (Stan Winston) (Michael Lantieri)

Kids' Choice Awards

• Favorite Animal Star - "Amy, the gorilla"

Razzie Awards

• Worst Director (Frank Marshall)
• Worst New Star "Amy the Talking Gorilla"
• Worst Original Song (Jerry Goldsmith) (Lebo M) For the song "(Feel The) Spirit of Africa"
• Worst Picture (Kathleen Kennedy) (Sam Mercer)
• Worst Screenplay (John Patrick Shanley)
• Worst Supporting Actor (Tim Curry)
• Worst Supporting Actress "Amy the Talking Gorilla"

External links

• Congo at IMDb
• Congo at AllMovie
• Congo at Rotten Tomatoes
• Congo at Box Office Mojo