Congo

Paramount Pictures | Release Date: June 9, 1995

5.9	USER SCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 67 Ratings

USER RATING DISTRIBUTION

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Watch Now

Stream On

Buy on

Stream On

Expand

Review this movie

VOTE NOW

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Please sign in or create an account before writing a review.

Check box if your review contains spoilers

0 characters (5000 max)

User Reviews

User score By date Most helpful

SpangleOct 27, 2016

In rating this film so lowly, I must endeavor to explain that everybody needs to watch Congo at least once in their life. How bad can a film about a team going to the jungle to discover a hidden city, diamonds, and return a gorilla to itsIn rating this film so lowly, I must endeavor to explain that everybody needs to watch Congo at least once in their life. How bad can a film about a team going to the jungle to discover a hidden city, diamonds, and return a gorilla to its home, actually be you ask? Well, in this film, a talking gorilla is far from the weirdest thing that exists. As Amy the talking gorilla (she uses sign language, which translates into words from a voice box...) is having nightmares and draws the forest, her trainers Peter (Dylan Walsh) and Richard (Grant Heslov) resolve to return her to her home in the Congo jungle. During a presentation to attempt to get research funding, a Romanian investor named Herkermer Homolka (Tim Curry) notices an eye in a painting by Amy that is the exact same as one in a ring he had that depicts the eye of Zinge, a lost city of King Solomon said to be overflowing with diamonds. As such, Homolka forks over the cash and off the go. But not so fast! A team from some communications company is already in the Congo jungle and is attacked and killed by killer apes! Karen Ross' (Laura Linney) greedy boss, set on finding diamonds to make some kind of weapon that can pierce the moon (...) dispatches her to find the missing research team and the diamonds.

From here, the film really becomes all the more insane. Up to the point described, it is merely a jungle adventure film blended with some kind of statement about capitalism at all costs. Many a good film has had a worse start. What makes Congo bad really comes later, once they leave for the Congo. Here, Amy the gorilla drinks a martini, the team fights a band of killer apes who were trained by the original diamond miners to be guard dogs only to turn on their masters, and of course the team finds the diamonds. Having killed the killer apes, the team is set to turn back, but not before Karen Ross shoots a satellite with the gun to stick it to her boss. She shot a satellite. Somehow, Congo descends from a solid adventure romp to a ludicrous science fiction film that could have only been concocted after a night of heavy drinking and even more gratuitous smoking. Yet, her shooting a satellite down without first locating it is not the most impressive marksmanship in the film. Together with Munro (Ernie Hudson), their guide, the two of them shoot down heatseeking missiles with flare guns. This is one of those movies.

Somehow, the bad in the film can only continue as Ernie Hudson and Tim Curry sport the weirdest accents in the history of film. I have no idea what they were supposed to be, but if they were supposed to be Congolese and Romanian, respectively, they missed the mark. The special effects of the gorillas are bad at the very best. And by bad, I mean that the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that came out nearly 30 years prior, were far more realistic looking. These look like the apes one finds in a grainy shot of Bigfoot that even six-year olds can spot as being just a man in a gorilla costume. The gorilla from that really weird episode of Spongebob looks far more representative of the species than the ones found in Congo. For a primatologist, Dr. Peter Elliott has no idea he has been working with a man in a gorilla suit this entire time.

Additionally, the film is brought down further with classic 1990s cheese, from bad jokes to just generally bad dialogue. The 1990s are often plagued with attempts to recapture the glorious one-liners of the 1980s and Congo most certainly tries. Not necessarily with one-liners, but with an attempt at a witty script. Instead, it comes off as incredibly awkward and weird rather than any type of humor recognized by humans.

Following an interesting beginning and a seemingly harmless plot, Congo smokes a few too many joints on the way to the finish line and becomes an absurd and off-the-wall disaster that must be seen to truly be believed. If the thought of Laura Linney shooting down a satellite or shooting flairs at heatseeker missiles sounds like a good idea to you, it may be time to sober up.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

All this user's reviews