No Surrender Cinema: Going Bananas
No Surrender Cinema is here to kick off the month of April, and this column may as well be called Not Your Average Cannon Films Review. For nearly a decade, you’ve seen our articles and heard our podcasts that sing the praises of a variety of Golan-Globus productions. We’ve spent countless hours reminding the world of how awesome Death Wish 3 is, or how Revenge of the Ninja is the best representation of the ninja craze on film. So what Cannon creation could possibly come next as a fit for our “Going Bananas” theme week? How about the movie that our theme pulls its name from; Going Bananas!
Even if you’re a hardcore Cannon fan, you might be hard-pressed to remember Going Bananas, as it wasn’t your typical Cannon film. There was no Charles Bronson with a giant gun; no Sho Kosugi making a conscious decision that only a ninja can stop a ninja. Nope, nothing like that. For Going Bananas, Cannonhad a whole new hero in mind. A man with a rather large, imposing presence. The burly, bearded…Dom DeLuise!?
Yes, Dom DeLuise. Burt Reynolds’ sidekick from The Cannonball Run. The big funny guy that you’d see in Mel Brooks movies. He would be the man in the role of protector in Going Bananas, because Big Bad Joe is assigned to be the guardian of a young man named Benjamin (played by David Mendenhall, the same young man who played Sylvester Stallone’s son in Over The Top) on an African excursion. Early on in their trip (and in the film) they meet their tour guide, Mozambo (Jimmie Walker of Good Times fame) and set out to explore. During their travels, the trio encounter a monkey that Ben eventually names Bonzo (played by little person Deep Roy in a monkey suit). Adding Bonzo to their group just adds even more wackiness to their adventures, like when the group attempts to get dinner at a five star restaurant complete with Bonzo in “disguise” as an older woman. Naturally, the attempt at a nice, quiet meal fails, and everything breaks down into a Three Stooges style ruckus that culminates in Big Bad Joe using his girth to seesaw a guy off a table and through a glass window. The group are thrown into jail, and that’s where they discover that their newfound ape friend isn’t just a mischief maker, but he can talk!
This discovery motivates the quartet to try a jail break, but it only works out for Ben and Bonzo, the latter of whom now starts talking a bit more and bonds with his newfound human pal. What follows is a lot of frolicking, all while Big Bad Joe and Mozambo have to plead their case for release and then venture out into Momba-Zomba Land (not a typo, that’s what the movie called it) to find their young charge. You would think Benjamin would be equally concerned that he’s wandering around in the middle of a strange country with a talking ape, but instead of racing to find the nearest adult, he decides to swing from a vine and ends up injured, caught in a pit full of scorpions! Lucky for him, Bonzo isn’t just morphing into a great conversationalist, but he’s also trained in the art of rescue missions, and beats back the scorpions before pulling Benjamin up to safety.
Scorpions aren’t the only problem that our fearless explorers face; corrupt Captain Mackintosh and his band of Keystone Cops are the foils that get to play the fool for our heroes. Apparently one of Mackintosh’s side gigs is to supply animals to a circus run by a man named Palermo, and once he finds out that Bonzo can talk, he has his officers kidnap Bonzo and make him a captive of Palermo’s circus! As soon as Ben, Big Bad Joe, and Mozambo get wind of what’s happened to their hairy friend, they hold several of the clowns at gunpoint and assume their disguises. The attempt to go incognito doesn’t work, but our heroes persist and fight to save Bonzo in front of a confused, yet entertained, circus crowd.
Going Bananas is not one of Cannon’s most remembered films, nor was it well-received. In fact, the entire concept of the film came about because Menahem Golan failed to sign Clyde The Orangutan (who appeared in Clint Eastwood’s Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can). When that deal didn’t work out, Golan still went ahead with the project, securing the services of Deep Roy and sticking him in the monkey suit to portray Bonzo. As if that wasn’t a sign that moving forward might not have been the best idea, Going Bananas failed to get the theatrical release that Cannon wanted for it, instead going straight to video, then cable, and then to the furthest place from many people’s memories. In fact, I hadn’t seen the film in years, which is why I offered to cover it for Going Bananas Week, and the only place you can currently see it is on YouTube. Something tells me that it would be a very long time, if ever, that this film gets the special edition treatment from any of the major boutique DVD companies.
When Dom DeLuise utters the line “not very funny” early the movie, he wasn’t kidding. The humor is extremely juvenile, bordering on cartoonish. At times it was like watching a school play try to recreate a scene from The Three Stooges. You would think that a film with DeLuise and Walker as main characters would produce at least a few chuckles, but it wasn’t meant to be. Neither guy has action hero in his blood, so I was hoping they would eventually make up for it by being their best selves, forgetting that Going Bananas was being made solely to put the monkey (or fake monkey, as it were) center stage.
If you want action, this is not the Cannon Films product you want. If you want comedy, this is not likely to make you laugh that much. But if a little person running amuck while shouting “BANANA!” and “BEN!” is your thing, then this is the movie for you! I’ve certainly seen my share of worse films in my day, but I’m going to close this column on the most appropriate note I can think of; Going Bananas just isn’t that appealing.
I’ll see myself out.
