The Ape USA, NR, 92 m, 2005
The Ape demonstrates that not all pictures released straight to DVD are of inferior quality. That may have been the case up until two or three years ago, but now that DVD sales take in more green stuff than even the most palatial of multiplexes (and the break between a movie’s theatrical debut and its subsequent video release is growing ever shorter), it just makes good economic sense for more obscure titles to sidestep the high cost of theatrical distribution and plug right into the cinephile’s home theatre. (Which often boasts better picture and sound quality than the Bijou anyway.) The home video market (and, to some extent, the Internet) has become a haven for edgier independent productions that otherwise might not have seen the light of day. Back when only a handful of studios were running the show, The Ape couldn’t have gotten arrested; it’s the kind of imaginative fare we expect (and too rarely get) from the new wave of indie cinema. Based on a one-act play by actor James Franco (Spider-Man, City by the Sea) and TV scribe Merriwether Williams (“Free for All,” “SpongeBob SquarePants”), The Ape is some sort of clumsy masterpiece—a quirky and sometimes penetrating satire with more honest-to-God laughs than anything else I’ve seen since well before the Year of the Green Wood Monkey. The stage version of The Ape was originally performed in 2003 (with Franco as the lead homo sapien) to an enthusiastic reception at the Playhouse West Repertory Theatre in North Hollywood, where it played on a double bill with another Franco/Williams collaboration, “Fool’s Gold.” The two reunited to pen the screenplay for The Ape movie, and Franco, who reprises his role from the stageplay, assumes producing and directing duties. As an actor, Franco is a lot of fun to watch (he seems game for anything), and as a writer, he has a surprisingly good ear for dialog. But, believe it or not, it’s in the director’s chair where he really shines. The Ape is one of the strongest directorial debuts I’ve seen in a long time, which is something I wouldn’t have thought I’d be saying when I first got a load of the cruddy design work on the flick’s DVD case. I don’t know who over at TLA Releasing came up with this layout, but it makes The Ape look like just another PG-rated piece of monkey business on the order of Spymate or Mom, Can I Keep Her? To make matters only more confusing for parents, the picture has been released unrated. If the film had been submitted to the MPAA for review, it most certainly would’ve received an R, but the seemingly unknowing staff at Blockbuster keeps stocking it in the children’s section right next to The Apple Dumpling Gang. I imagine there will be more than a few red-faced soccer moms trying to explain to their little darlings why the movie’s titular primate likes to tug on his wee-wee while he’s watching videos of girl gorillas going wild. For all of its scatological silliness, The Ape is incredibly perceptive. The characters have long exchanges that often reveal great and uncomfortable truths about the human condition, and that for me is always more exciting than even the most adeptly staged car chase or shoot-out. If you share my penchant for ideological excitement, The Ape is required viewing. The premise is appropriately simple: Harry (Franco) is a husband and father who is setting out to free himself from his dreary job in the human relations department at a NYC phone company by writing the Great American Novel. Trouble is, he can’t get the damned thing started; there are too many distractions at home. So, he takes a sabbatical from his air-conditioned nightmare and rents out a walk-up flat where he can write in peace. But he’s not alone in his new digs: a wise-cracking gorilla (played hilariously by Brian Lally) has been kicking it there for years, and Harry is responsible (by a hidden clause in his rent agreement) for the “upkeep of the ape.” When we first meet the ape, he’s done up in Harry’s duds: khakis, high-tops and a Hawaiian shirt. But the exposed areas of the gorilla—the face, forearms and hands—look like they were pilfered from the dumpster in back of Mangelsen’s. At first I was taken aback by the utter cheap-jack craftsmanship of the ape’s mask, which allows for about as much emotional range as Buster Keaton on a Paroxetine overdose. Of course, this is all very deliberate: the ape should not be mistaken for the genuine article; he is Harry’s id, the base, animalistic side that after years of being locked away in the dungeon is finally given a chance to walk in the sun. I don’t think this fractured flicker show would’ve worked if Tally had been outfitted with an ape costume by someone like Rick Baker; we would’ve been too preoccupied with the mechanics of the costume, and that would’ve been to the detriment of the writing—especially its humor. The el cheapo getup makes the wacky situation even funnier. Things don’t start off too promisingly between Harry and
the ape. To mark his territory, the ape flings runny clumps of his poop at
Harry’s bare chest, and while Harry toils to get something down on paper, the
ape distracts him with wet willies and off-color stories and jokes. Some might
find a few of the ape’s rants misogynistic, but male governance of the female
is the natural order of things where he comes from. He can’t abide Harry’s
girlie-man ways, and he goofs mercilessly on him for taking repeated floggings
from the women in his life. One particularly emasculating woman is Harry’s
boss, Cathy (Allison Bibicoff), a Jewish American Princess from Hell who rides
Harry’s ass for working on his novel while on the clock. (God knows I’ve
been guilty of that one.) But Cathy’s a hypocrite: she spends her hours
locked away in her office perusing Rendez-Jew,
an online dating community for “the chosen people.” At least that’s the
skinny from Harry’s yenta co-worker, Beth (Stacey Miller), who may harbor a
crush on Harry. The more Harry hangs out with the ape, the more of a
chest-thumping alpha male he becomes. (He also contracts a nasty case of lice.)
Before long, he’s nailing the boss atop her desk, and this reinvigorates him
enough to finally sit down and write (with a little help from his furry friend)
the first chapter of his novel. Harry
and the ape are both delusional enough to think they’ve created something
worthy of Tolstoy, so they mail off the first chapter to The New Yorker, believing that they can make an inroad into the
literary world by serializing the book à la Charles
Dickens. Harry fancies himself an “artiste” and an intellectual, but we
don’t see much to assure us of either. It’s obvious that Harry’s inability
to write at home had little to do with its distractions—he didn’t have much
to say in the first place. His lofty aspirations turn out to be nothing more
than an adolescent desire to goof off and shirk his responsibility as a
patriarch. He craves the independence and romanticism that he assumes
(incorrectly) a writer’s life will bring him, but he isn’t too gung-ho about
doing the shovel and spade work. His idol is Dostoevsky, whose portrait looms
over his desk, and thoughts from the author on this and that are used ironically
between act breaks. The quotes are superimposed over a chimpanzee as it sits in
its cage staring into space, picking its nose, and scratching its ass. The chimp
is also featured in the clever opening title sequence, which is reminiscent of
the video for Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” as the chimp holds
up pieces of cardboard with the film’s credits sloppily painted in red. The Ape does falter in its last few minutes when it suddenly feels the need to explain things to the audience that it already knows. Worse, it defuses the film’s momentum with the most predictable of bits, so ending the escalating excitement with a whimper instead of a bang. (I would’ve settled for something ambiguous.) But I know how hard it is to work up a good ending these days (just ask M. Night Shyamalan), so I’m not going to belabor the point. Suffice it to say that it’s not the directorial equivalent of slipping on a banana peel, but The Ape deserves a better coda—one befitting its daringness. All in all, this is a very good film (and only thiiis close to being a great one) because it’s true to the word of its source and still exquisitely cinematic. (The photography is by David Klein.) Why this film didn’t become a staple in the art houses is anyone’s guess. March 14, 2006 “The Ape” Review. © Copyright 2008 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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