Mighty Joe Young (1998)

Celebrate a towering tale of friendship and courage with the 20th Anniversary Edition of MIGHTY JOE YOUNG -- on Blu-ray for the first time! The legendary Joe, a fifteen-foot-tall gorilla, and his lifelong best friend, Jill Young, have grown up together in the remote mountains of Central Africa. After poachers shatter the gentle giant's peaceful existence, Jill and zoologist Gregg O'Hara transport him to an animal conservancy in California. But Joe's safety is short-lived when he again becomes the target of a ruthless enemy from his and Jill's past! After formulating the gorilla's dimensions, the materials to be used, and the mechanics for operating Joe, designers spent about a year creating the animal. Three Big Joes were created in three different postures -- Quadruped Joe (on all fours), Sitting Joe, and Sleeping Joe. The jungles and mountains of Oahu's Kualoa Valley doubled for the Pangani Mountains in Tanzania, Africa, where the early scenes of the film are set. Charlize Theron is the latest stunning blonde to be hanging around some big ape in a Hollywood movie, this one a remake of the 1949 semi-classic with echoes of the superior King Kong. Theron plays the daugher of an American researcher killed by poachers in Africa. The baby gorilla left in her care grows up to become a hugely tall and broad specimen named Joe, living in the mountains as a mostly unseen legend among people who live there. Along comes an eco-minded emissary (Bill Paxton) from a California sanctuary, who talks the jungle girl into providing safe haven for Joe at the L.A. facility. The transition is not without discomfort, but everything is aggravated via a conspiracy of poachers to get Joe into their own greedy hands. Director Ron Underwood (City Slickers) uses a combination of special-effects techniques to give Joe life and personality, and he succeeds quite effectively. The requisite giant-ape-goes-amok scenes are all in place--a couple of them pretty intense--as is a conclusion that finds the simian hero performing a stunning feat of escalation. Underwood attempts to give a little modern spin to some classic Hollywood conventions regarding wild hearts lost in civilization, and the results are pretty agreeable family fare. --Tom Keogh

Actors: Bill Paxton, Charlize Theron, Rade Serbedzija, Regina King, Peter Firth

Audio Languages: English, Unqualified

Duration: 114 minutes

Number of Discs: 1

Subtitle Languages: English

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