PROJECT X (Fox, 1987) D: Jonathan Kaplan, w/ Matthew Broderick, Helen Hunt. Rating: NNN DVD package: none Rating: NNN
The December 13 arrival of Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes on home screen makes a great excuse to dig out the original ape-escape movie: Project X. It’s not great, but it has something Rise doesn’t: real chimpanzees.
A young chimp captured in the wild, christened Virgil and taught to sign is sold to an Air Force research facility where he learns to operate a flight simulator. Virgil and his handler (Matthew Broderick) discover, independently, that graduating flight school is a ticket to death.
Virgil and his half-dozen companions emerge as well-defined characters. Apart from being portrayed as more docile than humans and quicker to learn and cooperate, they’re not anthropomorphized much, and the one leap of faith the story requires – that Virgil wants to fly – is plausibly established in the opening scene.
EXTRAS English audio. No subtitles.
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