Customer Reviews

Congo (Widescreen)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

I have always love the wild and to see a gorilla being introduced into the wild was great to see. The whilte gorillas were awesome as well as the diamond mine. Great movie to watch over and over.

The movie is based on the book of the same name. It's a classic B movie in which there's a lost city and treasures, strange creatures and modern science in the mix. Very entertaining.

Herkermer Homolka (Tim Curry) has been looking for the Lost City of Zinj. He is contemplating picking up a few souvenirs when he finds it. Seems that the only one that has been there is Amy (Misty Rosas). However Amy needs to go home. Her buddy and mentor is economically taped out. So they all team up with a Dr. Karen Ross (Laura Linney) who just happens to be going in that direction and can afford the travel arrangements. While Karen thinks she is going to save fellow explorer, her boss also has a nefarious plan.

Will Amy go home?

Will Karen find her friend "alive"?

Does the boss's plan come to fruition?

Will Herkermer Homolka get his trinkets or his fingers Zinj'd?

What secret does the lost city hold?

Let's face it Tim Curry makes the movie. Not only doe he excels in his character but allows others to play off him. Otherwise this would just be a run of the mill misadventure film. Great accent.

Definitely a great adventure and one of my personal favorites, Congo, brings to the screen a tale set in the African jungles involving an unlikely group that has banded together in search of a lost city and the rare diamonds that are rumored to exist there in abundance. The actors' performances are outstanding, especially Tim Curry whose "Romanian philanthropist" character steals the show. The plot, the jungle ruins, and the battles are all wonderful, making this film one of the best of its kind.
Congo is an action packed movie with strong elements of Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider, therefore, a "must see" for those with a passion for archaeology, mystery and adventure.

I loved this movie, bought the DVD and watch it over and over the performance is so good. It is hard to single out any one thing. The musical score and songs are so good, I keep playing them over in my head. The scene where Dylan Walsh's character starts singing "California Dreaming" to Amy and everyone of the Africans join in the song shows the universality of music and song to people. As with any well executed movie, the details were done right letting the viewer enjoy the actors work. All of the priciple actors came accross as believable in their characters. The only mystery to me is the total lack of credit listing for Joe Pantoliano's participation and his character not even being listed in the ending credits! There must be some Hollywood Gossip behind that. Ernie Hudson really stole the show. The using of a British accent was genius. Since the English colonized and ruled most of Africa for years and set up most of the schools, an African guide would speak English with a British accent. The ending sequence with the volcano erupting and the land splitting brings back fond memories of 1940s "expedition" movies that always ended with such a scene.

"Congo" is entertaining, well directed, scored and acted. It is well worth the price of purchase and my only critcism (the devil is in the details) is the depiction of too few porters to haul the amount of equipment they kept coming up with for different scenes. Laura Linney's character was great! She had the best lines in the movie too.

Rent it or buy it, you will not regret it.

Congo is an adventure movie that has a number of plot threads. The first is the search for Bruce Campbell who lost communications with TraviCom while searching for a perfect diamond in the Congo. A forced satellite link shows the camp in disarray and the team lying dead but Bruce was not seen. The link is then broken by something that looks like a killer gorilla. A team needs to get there quickly by attaching themselves to another expedition.

Secondly a young scientist has used virtual reality technology to teach a young gorilla how to talk. A computer and a VR glove interpret the gorilla's sign language and turns it into speech. The gorilla had also been taught to paint. Amy (the gorilla) is having nightmares and painting the jungle. An expedition is formed to return her to her home in the Congo.

Thirdly, we have Tim Curry as a Hungarian philanthropist who funds the gorilla expedition as he feels the gorilla has seen the lost city of Zinj built by Solomon to protect his diamond mines.

These three plots are tied together in a believable fashion with some interesting characters thrown in (especially the guide who alone makes the movie worth seeing).

As is typical in the Lost Race sub genre, something will happen to make returning impossible. In this movie the plot device is the volcanic range that produced the diamonds. This is one of the few modern Lost Race stories that works despite what modern science knows about the world.

The movie begins in the States setting up the plot threads then moves to traveling through an Africa in political upheaval and ends in the rainforest with Zinj and its mysterious inhabitants. Like most movies it has some flaws. The biggest being the Egyptian look of Solomon's city. Nothing Jewish looking about the place. The walls were even covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics. Still, it was an enjoyable movie with good characters and plots. This is a film I recommend.

Talk about things on the endangered species list, what about the good old-fashioned "B" movie? You remember, the type of movie you would go see on a Saturday afternoon where the faces of the actors are more memorable than their names, nobody seems overly concerned about the gapping holes in the plot, and there is a thrilling climax. It is hard to find a good "B" movie nowadays ("good" being a relative if not totally ironic term), but "Congo" sure fits the bill.

First, look at the cast. Laura Linney as Dr. Karen Ross has the most impressive body of work in film, but she is certainly the most atypical "heroine" to be seen in an action film for a while (Her secret? The good doctor knows how to pack for every occasion). I am sure I have seen Dylan Walsh, who plays Dr. Peter Elliot, in something else, but I cannot name you the film. Ernie Hudson as "great white hunter" Monroe Kelly is still probably best known as the non-comedian Ghostbuster, and Tim Curry gets to engage in monumental exaggerated acting as Herkermer Homolka the fortune hunter. Actually, it is Curry's performance alone that should key you in to the fact you are not supposed to take this film seriously (although I am sure Michael Crichton's novel was probably not this comic).

The plot has to try and keep up with the four different agendas of these main characters. Dr. Ross wants to find out what happened to her ex-fiancé, who disappeared in the jungle. Dr. Elliot wants to return Amy, a domesticated gorilla he has talk to "speak" using sign language and sophisticated technology, to her home in the jungle. Homolka is looking for the lost diamond mine of King Solomon, which is located somewhere in the jungle. Meanwhile, Mr. Kelly just wants to get everybody out of the jungle alive. The payoff for all these plot lines is a climax in which about a half-dozen independently unbelievable things happen within the space of about five minutes to allow some of our heroes to survive. At that point, plot holes seem the least of your problems as a viewer.

"Congo" is also one of those movies where you can have fun recognizing bits and pieces of your favorite movies crammed here and there into this one (e.g., the sentinel guns from "Aliens"). There is even one of those scenes where everybody starts singing a song together that has been popping up in so many films lately. This is a movie where that thing on top of your shoulder is there for the sole purpose of having a place to put your popcorn, because this is not a thinking person's film. Every once in a while you need to see a "B" movie and "Congo" fits the bill by that standard. If you were expecting a great film, then you are just going to be bitterly disappointed. But if you are sitting in bed going through one box of tissues after another, a film like this is just what the doctor ordered.

Sorry to say, but this is a very poor adaptation of Crichton's book. It is difficult to follow the plot in the movie as so much has been deleted that the movie seems to be more like 3 episodes put together with the same actors. If I had not read the book before, I would not have sat thru the first half of the movie, let alone the whole movie.
Thrash it.

Decent movie. Plot was exciting and interesting. The acting was fairly terrible. Ernie Hudson gave an interesting performance. Who is Dylan Walsh? Laura Linney played an annoying character. The writers could have done a little better with the actors interaction. Seemed like Dr. Eliot did not even care that his friend and assistant Richard was killed by the killer apes. How did he die anyways? He managed to make it to the safety of the rest of the crew, and was then terrified to death.

I don't even know why Richard (played by Grant Heslov) went on the safari anyways, he doesn't even like picnics. But I'm glad he did because it was funny to see the poor bug-eyed geek complain the whole trip. You could tell that no one on the crew liked him which is why I almost felt bad when he died. His final moments in the movie are by far the most memorable.

More of the porters should have been developed as characters. We only get to see Kahega and Claud. We dont really see what happens to most of them.

What are the chances that not one porter survives? Dr. Ross (Linney) should have died.

Anywho... see the movie for the sake of Grant Heslov.

I read the book and I watched the movie. I loved them both. I was intrigued by the use of technology in this movie. The characters played well with and against each other. The plot is more or less tightly woven. I can't find any major bloopers. The setting is authentic. This is a good movie to watch if you are interested in these elements.