The Monkey's Uncle

Robert Stevenson directed quite a few great Disney movies but "The Monkey's Uncle" isn't one of them. It's an okay watch, at best. The human cast is good. They all turn in nice performances. The monkey, however, isn't so hot. All of his scenes are pretty dumb. The nice cast is let down by a weak script. There is very little plot and very few real laughs. "The Monkey's Uncle" is an okay time killer if you're in the mood for a "vintage" Disney life action movie.

Slow and formulaic, it does at least have an amusing eventual pay-off.

'The Monkey's Uncle' is a sequel that never needed to be made. It isn't an awful film at all but struggles in a similar way as 'The Misadventures of Merlin Jones' does, just without the promising beginning.

The premise is dull, there is minor intrigue in the Darius Green III (Arthur O'Connell) plot but everything that builds up to it is uninteresting and mostly predictable. Tommy Kirk (Merlin) and Annette Funicello (Jennifer) are solid, but the performance of Leon Ames (Holmsby) comes across more sillier than in the 1964 production.

Disney continue to be iffy with their live-action sequels.

Say what you will about Walt Disney's slapstick suburban comedies of the 1960s, they at least looked good. Walt always ensured a decent production, and usually threw in some nifty visual effects, but "The Monkey's Uncle" is the exception. A pale follow-up to 1964's "The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones," the picture gets off to a spunky start with co-star Annette Funicello singing on-stage with the Beach Boys. Once the plot gets going, however, the movie becomes mired in Sitcomville; worse, it looks cheap and tatty, with flimsy walls passing for sets and terrible use of color photography. Having enjoyed "The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones" for what it was, I expected Disney to up the fun-quotient with this sequel, but it's a real snooze. *1/2 from ****

'The Monkey's Uncle' is the sequel to 'The Misadventures of Merlin Jones'. I have not yet re-watched this classic Disney comedy. Have I ever seen it? 'The Monkey's Uncle' is only available on VHS. The only place you can rent VHS nowadays is at the local library. If you're persistent enough you can find many VHS only movies at the local library. The first film is available on DVD and on Netflix but I couldn't find it at my local library and I don't yet have Netflix. So I watched the 2nd one first.

It's a very good and decent OK film. There is nothing outstandingly funny and memorable but there is nothing outstandingly bad worth mentioning either. The monkey in the title does play a central role in the movie but not as central as the title may suggest.

After opening up with the Annette Funicello (who just goes by Annette in the credits) and the Beach Boys, the film centers on Genius boy Merlin Jones. After becoming the Monkey's Uncle in a court hearing he then uses the chimp for scientific experiments. He plays records while the chimp is sleeping and when he wakes up, he thus is able to do what was instructed to him while he slept. Merlin uses this method for some football players to learn English while they sleep so they can pass the big English Test. It is an honest way to cheat.

The 2nd half of the film focuses on Merlin trying to invent a man-made flying machine. If he does his school will get a generous donation from some guy for 10 million dollars. Through the picture is a rivalry between two members of the college faculty which figures very significantly into both plots. One wants to abolish football because he was once rejected from the team and the other wants to keep it, thus relying on Merlin to always save the day.

There are some funny moments and gags. The ending is actually very good compared to the whole movie. It raises the film up a notch. It's an amusing film. Not worth avoiding and worth seeing if you're a Disney enthusiast. It's not on VHS (I think). Is it worth being on DVD? Well there are other Disney films that aren't great that are on DVD and for the sake of completion perhaps it should be. Put Merlin on the job to figure out how.

It is incredible that this hopeless mess of a movie was Robert Stevenson's follow-up to Mary Poppins! It is episodic to the point of incoherence, the 'monkey' of the title (actually a chimp, of course) barely appears, Annette's charm was wearing thin, and the sets, music and general production level are poor indeed. Tommy Kirk appears to be barely awake throughout much of the film; he was probably wondering why he ever signed that long-term contract with Uncle Walt. Worse is seeing Arthur O'Connell, Leon Ames and other dependable character actors flailing away with what must be one of the worst scripts ever churned out by Disney. This is another of those pictures that gave 'family films' a bad name. Of minor cultural interest is the appearance of the Beach Boys, who function as a back-up band for Annette during the opening credits! They then disappear and are never seen again – another example of the filmmakers' total lack of interest in anything that might sustain interest from beginning to end.