Mein großer Freund Joe

This update of "Mighty Joe Young" features incredible visual effects. They are so seemlessly blended into the picture that Joe seems more than real.

Bill Paxton is great as usual. In fact, most of the cast is pretty good. Charlize Theron is both tough and sexy. She worked better with Paxton than the contrived relationship he had with Helen Hunt in "Twister".

I watched this movie with my kids and they loved it too. Definately a thumbs-up as a family movie. I recommend it.

Mighty Joe Young is terrific family fare, and one of the better movies of 1998. It is based on the immortal classic from 1947 of the same name about a young woman and her faithful 20-foot tall, 2,000-pound gorilla named Joe.

Great special effects featuring Joe are the real highlight of the film, especially the animatronics and CGI which truly bring Joe to life.

There are also good performances, especially from Charlize Theron as the young woman, Jill, and Bill Paxton, fresh from Titanic, as the scientist who loves her.

But, the real star is the title character, the Mighty Joe, who brings a wonderfully gentle screen presence, and is the true hero of the film.

Highly recommended for children of all ages.

I saw a sneak preview of this movie-- the only movie I've been looking forward to in a long time-- and I was not disappointed at all. This is a terrifically entertaining movie that is wholesome enough for the kids but has enough action and darker aspects to interest adults. It was like Zorro in just being an entertaining, fun movie for everyone.

They've done a great job of creating Joe-- he seems very real and interacts very well with the environments. They have also succeeded in giving him a very vividly drawn personality-- you really root for him and it's almost hard to believe that he's just a special effect and not a living being. Kids will fall in LOVE with him-- and the charming notion, presented in the movie, of being best friends with a 15-foot Gorilla.

The first trailers I saw for this made it look like an action movie, but the current trailers make it look like a heartwarming, Free Willy-Type of film. It really does both, but without being too sweet. Many people in my audience cried and cheered at the end. I hope this film does well and I would love to see a sequel. I think Joe will become a very beloved character in kid's minds.

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My Take: Fine special effects and decent performances make for a passable remake.

A toned-down remake of the 1949 monster movie (not that the original was violent or so) by Disney, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG is enjoyably pleasant nonetheless. There's a lot of enjoyable moments here to entice kids and adults alike. It's fun, without being too loud, too lumbering and too overproduced unlike other summer affair of the time. It could use more, but enough just seems to be enough. There's a good dosage of fine adventure movie elements. There's action, adventure, humor and even romance.

The romance is created between two of the lead characters. Bill Paxton as an explorer named Gregg O'Hara and a Charlize Theron as Jill Young, a daughter of a late famous Jane Goodall-inspired scientist. There's chemistry between those two, even if it's not entirely developed. It's also a simple boy-likes-the-girl chemistry, but it works well and I bought it. Ask for the adventure, there are numerous action scenes which takes place both in the jungle in even in the city, which shows a scenes directly derived but not entirely similarly to the scene from KING KONG. The special effects by Rick Baker, who actually started doing apes in a somewhat cheesy outcome during the 70's remake of KING KONG, are fine here in the film. There's a convincing use of blue screen and the typical man-in-a-suit technique that actually is less evident here.

Director Ron Underwood (TREMORS) brings a lot of excitement in this familiar territory. The film cannot escape the multitudes of clichés that marred this old genre to the ground. Some things about MIGHTY JOE YOUNG are familiar, as a toned-down kids flick. I've learned the lesson before, there's no one that harshly gets hurt in this film, except the bad guys who must get their just desserts in the end. But the film is lively and enjoyable enough for me to recommend. This is decent family entertainment.

Rating: *** out of 5.

I was anxious to see this movie as I had seen the original in 1949 and I was not disappointed. This is one of those rare instances that a remake was okay. This originally was an RKO Radio Picture and the new updated RKO Pictures logo at the beginning was a great tribute. Also it was very fitting to have Terry Moore, the original star, and Ray Harryhausen, the man who made the special effects in the first one, to have a cameo. A lot of critics did not like this movie but my 3 grandchildren did. Why not have movie critics the same age as the targeted audience, such as having kid critics and women critics and senior citizen critics to give a real reaction of what they like and don't like.