Dear God, make it stop! Please! I know I am a bad person. I do terrible things and think terrible thoughts! The Marquis de Sade doesn't make me blush, and I idolize Bender B. Rodriguez and Larry, that swingin' lounge lizard who lived above the Three's Company apartment. But even a man as evil as I doesn't deserve any more "jungle adventure" movies comprised almost entirely of bored actors pointing at grainy stock footage! The story this time: a group of explorers plunge into the dark heart of Africa in search of the fabled white gorilla, the supposed missing link between primitive ape and modern man. Except that White Pongo isn't a missing link; he's just a regular gorilla, except with white fur. Read into that whatever racial implications you will. Especially when the white gorilla is proven to be heroic and noble, and thus must defend a white woman against the advances of a nasty, brutish black gorilla.

Most of the movie is, as is par for the course, footage of someone's safari which, by now, is painfully familiar. Are we going to see that shot of an elephant raising its trunk? Check. How about a pacing leopard or something? Oh yeah, we got that, too. And when the movie isn't amazing you with the same stock footage every cheap adventure movie used, it fills itself either with shots of natives dancing around a fire or white guys walking through a jungle set. I love the theory of jungle adventure movies, but the reality is usually less than my imagination delivers. And White Pongo certainly delivers very little.

Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics