Congo... why CONGO, you ask? Well, recently when I'd been browsing around X-Entertainment's blog (which rhymes with frog), I came across a spiel about Toys 'R Us sales, and how Matt had purchased hundreds of Mewtwo plushies and grey furry Congo gorrillas, which really meant nothing to me. I mean, I didn't even recall that there was a movie called Congo, let alone that gorillas were involved. Should have guessed, but anyway.

Lo and behold, on the night of September 11th no less (still being referred to in various press biopics as "the day when the world as we know it changed". We know that, dammit), what should be screened but Congo? Life is full of these silly little opportunities. So I thought, why watch a love story involving River Phoenix - too bloody creepy for my taste - when a whole movie crammed with gorrillas and total silliness is available on UHF? I think I regret this line of thinking....

The gorrilla in this case is called Amy. She can speak sign-language, and this electronic glove thing she wears translates each sign into a word. This is so all those researchers who are too lazy to learn sign-language can cheat. Then she gets it into her little simian head that she wants to return to the central African jungle where she was captured (we know this because of the silly electronic voice that keeps saying Jungle! Jungle! Jungle! Amy, Jungle! Good, good, good Amy! If I were around it would sound more like: "Jungle! Jungle! Amy.... aaargh!" Annoying thing. Well, they've taught syntax and grammar to a parrot and a chimpanzee, so why not teach full sentences to an idiot in a gorrilla suit?)

It's not long before the expedition is financed by Tim Curry, with a bad Romanian accent no less, and the required token woman who is searching for missing diamond prospectors. So off they go, flying to the Congo. They end up in a civil war - obligatory in a Hollywood movie set in central Africa - and an obnoxious general, with a penchant for calling Tim Curry a bag of shit, demanding bribes. (What tripe! The minute you bribe anyone in any African country, you have to bribe everyone. The only way to actually get anywhere is to pretend you're a completely happy moron who cannot take a hint.) They meet up with a gun-runner and his merrie bunch of AK47-toting bearers, and fly off to Zaire via Tanzania (cut to shot of girraffe walking through the bushveld, with inspiring music. Not that you normally get inspiring music in the middle of the veld. What you do get is a marvelously velvet silence.)

I loved the smarmy gunrunner guy with the ridiculously impeccable Brit accent and the ability to spew Swahili wherever he went. I also loved Tim Curry's stupid ex-Soviet accent and the fact that he was obsessed with finding a lost city named Zinge. Yes, Zinge. No self-respecting secret enclave of diamond-miners who trained gorillas as sentries and carved eyes all over the place would dream of calling their lost city "Zinge". Good grief!

The trippiest moment in the movie was when all the gunrunners started to sing California Dreaming, although the "secret tribe's" broadway-choreographed ritual was a close second. Oh, yes - and the general's comment that "no one in my country wants to be seen harming a gorrilla in an American movie."

I know I'm too much of a stickler for accuracy, but even if there were a secret Jewish diamond mine in the middle of the bush, wouldn't the poachers have found it by now? And why would Jewish miners have carved Egyptian hieroglyphics over everything? Errrg! Never mind the fact that Solomon's riches were derived from copper mines in the deserts of Israel, and the fact that the city of Megiddo controlled the trade routes between Africa and the near East. Egypt couldn't trade with the Hittite Empire - or the Assyrians, Chaldeans and Lebanese - without paying trade tax to Solomon. And vice versa. Diamonds didn't come into it, although there were trips to bring "gold from Ophir" - and apes and sandalwood; strange combination - although no one knows where Ophir was.... Possibly India? Or Somalia? It's one of those eternal mysteries. (Incidentally, Megiddo is situated in the Hills of Megiddo, which in Hebrew is Ar Megiddo. Where we get the name Armageddon.)

What really irritated me about this movie is the absolute stereotyping of Africa and Africans. No one could be bothered to actually visit Africa and live in, say, Dar es Salaam or Nairobi (where my Dad was born) and find out what it's like to live there. Most people live in cities just like everyone else. I grew up in suburbia, for goodness' sake. No one has pet hippos in their back yard, either. All the Africans in the movie were either insane corrupt military types, insane secret tribes, or insane gunrunners. There was a slight bit of deprecating humour about this in the movie itself: [American idiot] "Claude? that's an odd name for someone who's from .... Mombasa." [African guy] "Have you ever been to Mombasa?" [American guy] "No." [African] "Then what do you know about it?"

Even so, I was really offended; I was left thinking that no one really seems to care about Africa; African countries are still labouring under huge debts incurred by corrupt totalitarian governments, the US and Europe impose huge import taxes on all their goods, and American farmers are so subsidised that African farmers simply cannot compete against US export goods in their own country. This is simply because, although farmers are a small voting minority, they are also a highly vocal lobby-group. I think it's time people who care about Africa start lobbying their Congressperson to remove subsidies on US produce-exporters; it doesn't benefit the country in the sense of a net gain anyway, as the money brought in by the sale of the goods is used up on government subsidies. I think Economics should be a mandatory course for all politicians, dammit. Oh, yes. All those old clothes people give to charity to clothe "starving people in Africa"? They're sold in bulk, undercutting and destroying homegrown African textile and clothing industries. So maybe, give your old clothes to homeless North American people, or to real charities. Most people are only after a quick buck....

All in all, Utter crap. I gave up because the last quarter of the movie was so damn violent (Shoot the hippos! Shoot the killer nasties! Shoot anything that moves!) and I was tired. The stupid sooperweapon the gadget-geek woman used to kill the mad killer enemies was just a bit beyond belief, but anyway. Three thumbs down, dammit. (They deserve to go to Hersh. Hersh! - as Matt would say.)

Mmmmph. I really hated the scene wherein a hippo attacks the actors's boat and they all shoot the poor thing to death with AK47's. How bloody hideous! Aside from the fact that the poor creature was only defending its territory, hippos are never in the bloody river (well, it was bloody when they'd finished with it) at night anyway; they emerge from waterways at night to graze. Crocodiles are what you have to worry about at night. Hippos during the day. Can Hollywood never get it right? Oh, wait, this is a movie about a talking gorilla. Why am I even asking??