Compared to its predecessors in the giant ape genre, Mighty Joe Young is rather a tame film, but the old Cooper-Schoedsack-Willis O'Brien charm is still evident in its every frame. There's a engaging and child-like feel for exotic places and things that's been largely killed off over the years by mass media and air travel, and the movie has for me a sort of wide-eyed boys' book quality that still works. In this respect the film is rather like the Tarzans and the Maria Montez-Sabu-Dorothy Lamour jungle and island pictures, full of a love for the exotic and faraway, anything unlike Main Street, USA. As the story of yet another giant ape and his problems with 'civilization' it's okay but nothing special; that so much of it is played for laughs is all for the good. Mr. Young's rampage in the nightclub is still something to see; breathtaking and funny, it is in some ways the movie's climax. There's a bigger sequence to come, however, as an orphanage is (conveniently) burning down, which gives Joe a chance to show what a humanitarian he is despite his temper. The movie is awfully sentimental at times, and though it's a kind of sentiment I can live with and even sometimes share, it does seem to indicate a lessening of the creative powers of the men behind the camera.
Review of Mighty Joe Young
