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| Chimp Phantom Menace,
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| Media,
Richard Young,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F5
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It’s a rare occurrence that I laugh so much I nearly feint from oxygen depravation. But this happened to me only last week, when a good friend of mine sent me a Quick-time movie entitled "The Chimp Channel – TFN". It appears that our chums at TheForce.net have had the foresight to digitise a short film parody of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace starring, you’ve guessed it, chimpanzees. The Chimp Channel (TCC) is a network offshoot of the American TBS Superstation, and includes some hilarious sounding monkey-driven parodies of popular television and film titles. "TV Tummies" (a Teletubbies mickey take starring, among others, Tanky Wanky), Ally McSqueal (where Ally encounters the dancing baby chimp) and a remake of classic monkey movie, King Kong, are just some of the delights to behold.
Here in the UK, it is impossible to survey the history of "chimpanzee as human" televised entertainment without acknowledging the importance of the PG tips television commercials. Almost as soon as the words "and now for a commercial break" were first heard, living rooms throughout the land were witness to a veritable cornucopia of simian slapstick. Who could forget chimp James Bond, the chimp arctic explorers, or the immortal line "Dad, do you know the piano’s on my foot?". In the US, chimpanzee humour was taken to an altogether more extreme level with the 60’s television show "Lancelot Link – Secret Chimp", a truly bizarre and often quite disturbing event where cheetah actors with human voices played out the adventures of a chimpanzee detective and his nit - picking buddies. Unsurprisingly, the people involved in this monkey exploitation machine have all but disappeared from the face of the Earth. This hasn’t stopped our banana eating chums from pushing their way onto our screens again in a range of contemporary shorts courtesy of TCC. The aforementioned Phantom Menace parody is a triumph. Qui Gon and Obi Wan whack battle droids with their plastic lightsabres, and there is even a chimp Darth Maul and a chimp Jar-Jar.
I have seen the light. This is truly the way forward, people. Even when Charlton Heston uttered the words "take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!", was he speaking to real monkey? No – it was a man in a suit. And were we convinced? Not likely. A message to all directors: Forget furry costumes, forget CGI. Nick Park – you can keep your plastecine peanut-poppers. I have seen the future of acting – and it swings from trees.
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