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Tarzan the Ape Man
(1932) - Directed by W.S. Van Dyhe
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Adventure
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"AAAH-A-A-A-A-AAAAAAAAAA-A-A-A-A-AAAAAH!"
(1932) - Directed by W.S. Van Dyhe
--------------------------------------------
Adventure
-------------------------------------------------
"AAAH-A-A-A-A-AAAAAAAAAA-A-A-A-A-AAAAAH!"
Remember my long and thorough review of Disney's Tarzan? I plan on bringing that same dissection here. I've decided to take a small break from the "one war movie a day" chain for the upcoming countdown, and decided it as finally time for me to stop putting this movie off. If I'm a movie buff and a fan of the book, then if other skinny asses can do it I'ma ****in' do it.
Jane Parker surprises her father by joining his expedition to Africa, where he and his partner Harry Holt are hoping to find an elephant graveyard to extract it for the ivory. But after escaping from a bunch of crocodiles, Jane is snatched up by Tarzan, and slowly they begin to develop a relationship. But once Jane and her father reunite, other dangers will be found along the way.
Alright, this was one of the very first REAL adventure movies of the sound era, and the scope of its adventure status is impressive. We all known that Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller is the most famous actor to play Tarzan, as that yell is his (albeit manipulated). And we see the full tough guy side of him as Tarzan's wrestling various animals, keeping the jungle adventure alive with the help of some good epic shots of the wild.
And that's about all I can say about the good.
The story is half-written. Throughout most of the movie, we forget about the very reason Jane and her father are in the jungle because most of the movie is Tarzan being Tarzan and humorously "charming" Jane, which doesn't really feel romantic at all. I mean, these plot twists can other be so generic or just come across as soapy, especially towards the end. This especially sucks because the characters are not very well handled. There's one side to each of them, except Jane who shows a shred of tough girl at the beginning and immediately degrades into a complete damsel in distress. Her father and Harry Holt have no development at all except for practically being the same person: doesn't like Africa but does research there anyway.
On this note, Tarzan is just a plain old jungle boy. Where's the genius shown in the novel? He just grunts and wrestles and yells. As an adaptation, we get NONE of Tarzan's backstory at all. This is a huge no no as this means that the people behind the movie just assume that everyone already read the book. So instead we're left with a mishmash of cute scenes and thrilling scenes to hide the fact that Tarzan himself was poorly handled.
I'm not very impressed with this early Tarzan movie. Maybe the scope of it at the time helps it age more well than it deserves, but I really can't say that this is the Tarzan movie people deserve. Apparently, Burroughs created his own serial version as soon as he saw this because he hated the way Tarzan was handled. That's what I would've done. This Tarzan movie has fun moments as an adventure movie, but as an adaptation of a romantic adventure novel, it fails pretty hard.
= 53/100
W.S. Van Dyke needs 2 more films for an average score.
Jane Parker surprises her father by joining his expedition to Africa, where he and his partner Harry Holt are hoping to find an elephant graveyard to extract it for the ivory. But after escaping from a bunch of crocodiles, Jane is snatched up by Tarzan, and slowly they begin to develop a relationship. But once Jane and her father reunite, other dangers will be found along the way.
Alright, this was one of the very first REAL adventure movies of the sound era, and the scope of its adventure status is impressive. We all known that Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller is the most famous actor to play Tarzan, as that yell is his (albeit manipulated). And we see the full tough guy side of him as Tarzan's wrestling various animals, keeping the jungle adventure alive with the help of some good epic shots of the wild.
And that's about all I can say about the good.
The story is half-written. Throughout most of the movie, we forget about the very reason Jane and her father are in the jungle because most of the movie is Tarzan being Tarzan and humorously "charming" Jane, which doesn't really feel romantic at all. I mean, these plot twists can other be so generic or just come across as soapy, especially towards the end. This especially sucks because the characters are not very well handled. There's one side to each of them, except Jane who shows a shred of tough girl at the beginning and immediately degrades into a complete damsel in distress. Her father and Harry Holt have no development at all except for practically being the same person: doesn't like Africa but does research there anyway.
On this note, Tarzan is just a plain old jungle boy. Where's the genius shown in the novel? He just grunts and wrestles and yells. As an adaptation, we get NONE of Tarzan's backstory at all. This is a huge no no as this means that the people behind the movie just assume that everyone already read the book. So instead we're left with a mishmash of cute scenes and thrilling scenes to hide the fact that Tarzan himself was poorly handled.
I'm not very impressed with this early Tarzan movie. Maybe the scope of it at the time helps it age more well than it deserves, but I really can't say that this is the Tarzan movie people deserve. Apparently, Burroughs created his own serial version as soon as he saw this because he hated the way Tarzan was handled. That's what I would've done. This Tarzan movie has fun moments as an adventure movie, but as an adaptation of a romantic adventure novel, it fails pretty hard.
= 53/100
W.S. Van Dyke needs 2 more films for an average score.