By this point, you pretty much know what you're going to get from a Disney Nature film, and Monkey Kingdom turns out to be no exception. Absolutely beautiful, frequently astonishing footage? Check. Overbearing narration that relies on overly anthropomorphizing the animals? Check. Immersive, if obviously sanitized, view of nature? Check. And yet, Monkey Kingdom works better than the other films the series has brought us so far - and far better than the treacly Bears - if only because the quality of all of those elements seems to be at a higher level than usual. Monkey Kingdom features no end of astonishing footage, but the setting of Monkey Kingdom - an abandoned city in Sri Lanka that's become a home for macaque monkeys - is especially beautiful, and the built-in atmosphere created by the contrast between this abandoned world and nature makes for some rich viewing. (And that's before the film follows the monkeys on their forays into more civilized areas, which results in some really incredible shots that are both beautiful, interesting, and surprisingly entertaining on a fundamental level.) Yes, the film still relies on imposing a "human" narrative on the story, but for whatever reason - maybe because monkeys are so much closer to us than African cats or bears, maybe because Tina Fey is a better narrator, maybe because it's dialed back a bit - it works better than usual, and ends up working more often than not. And if the film occasionally goes a little heavy on things - especially in some music cues - it also features some really funny moments that don't feel so much like "wacky animal bloopers" so much as genuinely funny moments in the world. I genuinely liked Monkey Kingdom, and it's probably the first of the Disney Nature movies that worked for me this well. Maybe it's the genuinely fascinating story the filmmakers stumbled upon; maybe it's the footage; maybe it's everyone stepping up their game. But it's a pretty wonderful nature documentary, and by the end, I had a five-year-old daughter talking about how she could make movies like that someday. Cool enough for me.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe
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