Aus dem Dschungel, in den Dschungel (1997)

Aus dem Dschungel, in den Dschungel: Directed by John Pasquin. With Tim Allen, Martin Short, JoBeth Williams, Lolita Davidovich. A man learns he has a thirteen-year-old son who was raised in the jungle and brings the boy to New York City, turning his life upside down in the process.

“Michael Cromwell is a successful New York stockbroker looking forward to his marriage to a successful fashion model. However before he can do this he must finalise the divorce from his wife, who left him about 12 years ago. Unfortunately she lives on a tropical island off the coast of Brazil and he finds himself stuck on the island with her. If that wasnu0026#39;t bad enough he learns that the pale, 12 year old member of her tribe (Mimi-Siku) is actually his son. In order to avoid looking at the morality of her not telling him about this life, the story then requires Mimi-Siku to go to New York for reasons too boring to explain and u0026quot;laughteru0026quot; ensues and Michael learns some lessons that we all saw coming from a mile off.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIt is rare for me not even to have the energy to type a decent plot summary for a film but for this one I make an exception. Part of the problem is the fact that the plot manages to be embarrassingly predictable from start to finish and provides nothing of value along the way. This is only made worse by the lack of laughs and the regular scenes of Mimi-Siku failing to fit in, one of the most embarrassing of which sees him dancing with his father on the street. It is a string of obvious scenarios all run together just as youu0026#39;d expect and there is nothing of any interest developed along the way. There are plenty of u0026quot;wild fish out of water in big cityu0026quot; films already kicking around and this offers no reason to add this to the list of the ones youu0026#39;ve seen.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe cast are equally lost in the midst of all this stuff and resort to mugging and overplaying at every opportunity. Obviously Allen was going to do this anyway since this is what most of his films tend to be like. Martin Short does the same here and at least gets one, maybe two laughs as a result – which is more than Allen. The clearly well-off and white Huntington is hilariously poor as the boy of the film, he doesnu0026#39;t convince in any part of the film and is a big part of it being embarrassing. The rest of the cast have little to do and even a turn from Stiers adds no value.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOverall a roundly poor film that takes the u0026quot;wild fish out of water in cityu0026quot; genre, ticks as many boxes as it can, writes lots of predictable and weak scenarios and places them all within a story that is so poorly developed that you pretty much know where it is going from the very start. No laughs and no interest – it might work as noisy nonsense to distract children but it has no value past that.”