When the title mentions 'Mein Vater, der Affe und ich', you would expect these three characters to have something to do with one another. Not so in this comedy. Mein vater has no more than a supporting part, his daughter (the 'Ich' person) ran away from home because she belongs to the protest generation', and der affe has nothing to do with either of them, though he gets slightly more screen time. This chimp called Jimmy belongs to Professor Felix Grimm, who is convinced the simian can speak and has already deciphered 49 words from ape language to German. But Jimmy suffers from some mysterious illness so the professor asks veterinarian Dr. Wolf (the main character, I think) to look after him.
Herr Wolf seems to be fitted with some sort of animals in need radar. After picking up loudmouth runaway Biggi on his way to a hotel (where most of the action takes place), they find Bambi's mother hit by a car. Once at the hotel, a desk clerk shoves 4 new born kittens into his arms. Strangely enough, he gives them to the monkey, who prefers bothering hotel guests over kittens. To make matters worse, each person who comes into contact with the little chimp breaks out in a panic, shouting 'King Kong' and tearing off items of clothing in order to toss them at the chimp (who was already wearing some anyway).
There are so many useless sub plots that it becomes near impossible to keep track of the plot, if there is any. We have the professors loyal secretary, two annoying zookeepers trying to get a rhino couple to mate and a rich American woman with stolen jewelery. Then suddenly singer Michael Holm appears with a couple of Go-go dancers to sing a ludicrous pop song for no reason at all. Oh, and there is a bit of a romance too: when der doktor and the opinionated girl visit Schonnenbrunn Zoo, all the animals give them advise on the art of love (via tacky voice overs). Still, despite the professor's claims the monkey shows no sign of speaking, and I have the nasty suspicion all his ooh ooh hoo's and hoo hoo ooh's where dubbed.
3 out of 10
