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Created Apr 28, 2012 11:14PM PST • Edited Mar 22, 2015 01:26AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Youth is wasted on the young – the saying goes. The same can be said about Chimpanzee. Not that children won’t appreciate it. They’ll love it. It’s just that grownups will appreciate it more, though how many adults without kids in tow deign to see “family” nature documentaries?

   Dramatic nature documentaries like Chimpanzee – combining up-close nature with major dramatic development – are a new breed. The never-seen-before nature is bracing and the drama is hard to believe, even if there’s no reason not to believe it. The Last Lions remains King of the Genre.

   Chimps – our nearest evolutionary cousins – are catnip to humans. Seeing them up-close in wild West Africa, swinging through trees, grooming one another, even group hunting … what a treat!

   Waste not, want not. See Chimpanzee. Help save Chimpanzees by doing it. Jane Goodall is involved.

   It’s a good thing.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Oscar the baby chimp is as appealing a movie-star as the Silver Screen has seen in a long time. What’s not to love? He’s cute as the Dickens, swings through trees and tries hard to make friends. Plus we get to see him grow up a piece. Great kid.

   Eesha is a Great Mother. Oscar is a lucky boy. Then he loses her. It’s sad but he survives, then thrives.

   Freddy the Alpha Male cagily keeps the Community fed and safe, notwithstanding incursions by Scar and his apes. The Community is lucky to have Freddy.

   Ultimately Oscar is super lucky to have Freddy, a metrosexual Alpha Male in the end.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

   Tim Allen

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield deserve major adulation for making Chimpanzee, not two years after making African Cats for DisneyNature. The latter is a great movie, albeit inferior if not softer than The Last Lions.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Great 4.0

    The high times and low times of Freddy’s Community make for fascinatingly transfixing hominidiology (Sp? How else?).

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    It took super special digital cameras and a high tolerance for jungle ants to get this footage. Wow.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.0

    Yes it’s titillating — not embarrassed to admit it. The violence would be way above fierce if they didn’t edit out the real tough stuff.

17. Sex Titillating 1.9

18. Violence Fierce 2.5

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Natural 1.0

    Apparently real. Yes we said apparently. This is the age of the digital swindle and “Don’t believe anyone.” Apparently.

22. Circumstantial Natural 1.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0