Human politics infuse fun Monkey Kingdom

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      Narrated by Tina Fey. Rated G.

      Disney nature films always anthropomorphize the earth’s lovable critters. But Monkey Kingdom may be their first to focus on human-style politics.

      Monkeys and apes are our closest relatives, of course, so we’re bound to see more mirroring than usual. Still, it’s startling to see a credit for The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, where this study of macaque monkeys in motion was filmed. And even more so to find that the story woven by British co-director Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill (they both worked on Chimpanzee and many other nature docs) tackles upward mobility within a rigid caste system.

      As described playfully, if with too few meditative pauses, by narrator Tina Fey, the tale follows a lowborn female dubbed Maya, who scrambles for leftovers at the ground level of a food chain that follows the contours of tasty fruit trees in and around the ancient town and temple of Polonnaruwa. Kings reserve tribal females for themselves, but after an outsider—a “hunky monkey” called Kumar—makes a quick visit, Maya has a baby monkey we call Kip. (No mention is made of a marriage certificate, so it will be interesting to see how this plays in the U.S. South.)

      Through various changes in fortune, the one-percenters are shaken up, and Maya finds some openings in a formerly closed loop. Along the way, there’s a battle over their favourite hangout, and visits to an urban setting, in which our simian pals plunder a human child’s birthday party. This is by far the most obvious set-up among many possibly contrived situations, and we only have the filmmakers’ word (and Tina’s) that we’re even seeing the same monkeys throughout.

      But this will matter little to the small primates for which the film was designed. Stick around for the credits to see how arduous much of the filming was, and to confirm that the 80-minute movie’s cheeky opening was sung by Mickey Dolenz, as in “Hey, Hey, We’re the You-Know-Whats!”

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