(SPOILERS AHEAD!)
I don’t know what I was expecting from this movie, but I definitely wasn’t expecting a political battle of slogans in a town whose citizens are scared of the threat of monkey labor taking their jobs!
Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, the film takes place in a small town in France where an American, Hank Dussard (played by Dean Jones), comes to own an olive grove. However, picking the olives requires many hands and he has no wife or children to help him. So instead, he utilizes the help of four chimpanzees in his possession as he used to train them as part of the American space program (it’s such a deus ex machina fact)! He tries to keep the chimpanzees a secret, but soon the townspeople find out resulting in some people using fear of monkey labor taking over their jobs as a slogan to get Hank out of there! Nevertheless, he fights this political battle with a friend, Maria Riserau, played by Yvette Mimieux, and a local Father, Father Sylvain, played by Maurice Chevalier in his final acting performance.
It’s definitely an interesting premise, not bad or anything, but…interesting. I was worried that I would be bored and annoyed since I don’t like animal-based movies, but thankfully the monkeys aren’t in the film all that much nor the main focus of the film, ironically. Instead, the human characters are the main focus. The performances by all were very good overall especially by Dean Jones, Maurice Chevalier, and Yvonne Constant. There is a Sherman Brothers song as well, which isn’t their best work, but a less than perfect Sherman Brothers song is still interesting.
I don’t really know what else to say about this movie. It didn’t leave me with a bad taste in my mouth or anything, but it was more like, huh, this was a thing that was made…interesting…
So, my final score for this film is 22/35 = 62.86% (D-) !
The next review will be posted on August 25, 2026.
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