Tarzoon: La Honte de la jungle

Okay, first things first: NO!! This has NOTHING to do with Ralph Bakshi. Jeez, another reviewer here (thankfully with zero upvotes) went on a rant about how this was lame for Bakshi, etc, etc. Wow. And, look! Here we are at IMDb where the cast & crew is listed clearly. It's a FRENCH-made film!

Whew.

That said... it's written by Mr. Mike! It's awkward, weird, dry as hell, funny, unfunny and sometimes actually entertaining.

I've never seen the original French version, so I can't compare, but methinks something was lost in the translation. I would guess that Mr. Mike and Anne Beatts just scrapped the original script and made up their own (kinda like J-Men Forever or What's Up Tiger Lily?). And, sure, Brian Doyle Murray, Bill Murray, John Belushi, etc are all there to help... only you have to be more stoned than they were to enjoy it.

But, really, it has it's moments!

Not quite awful but very far from good, this odd little movie wears out its welcome a lot sooner than you might imagine. It's like one of those sub-standard VIZ clones that cluttered up newsagent's shelves from the late eighties onward come to life, with a screenplay apparently written by an unreconstructed nightclub comedian who aims for the lowest common denominator and hits his target every time. It might be funny to see marching genitalia, a monkey poking a woman's naked breasts or the Tarzan character getting his penis stretched to impossible lengths the first couple of times, but that's really all the film has going for it in the humour department. A shame, because the animation is actually pretty good, and whoever came up with the rich soundtrack score deserved to see his work put to better use. The film achieved a minor cult following in the early days of home video in England due to its explicit (for the time) subject matter and the novelty value of seeing cute characters behaving badly.

The creative writers of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE wrote the English version of this extreme unfunny cartoon from France. The film was barely released (played in Seattle as TARZOON;SHAME OF THE JUNGLE in only one drive-in with a small ad in 1979) This film only got any kind of release was because of the voice talent of John Belushi who has a thankless voice role in a unfunny material he wrote (!). I don't know what voice Bill Murray did, and the late Adolf Ceasar also has a nothing voice role also. All the joke do not work, and it's a suprise since MR. MIKE'S MONDO VIDEO worked very well. Only highlight is a amusing march segment these soldiers did with a funky catchy french/african tune on. It a watered down 70mins print for the U.S., but I guess the french has more explicit cartoon version. Not recommended, unless you like to check out Belushi's forgotten work.

I'll be honest. This film doesn't live up to Bashki's work. Something went amiss here. The script is surprisingly good, the V'O 's are great and it has many inventive moments too. May'be it tries too hard, by putting so much in. It just doesn't measure up to Bashki's other work. Nonetheless I'll run down the plot. In the adult world, Shame is the Tarzan, but really doesn't have much upstairs. His wife June (his Jane) is very unfulfilled sexually. Shame's quite the impotent one. They have a pet monkey, and use water from an elephant's trunk as their daily mean of showering. Enter the bad bald nasty Queen who desperately needs a head of hair. She has fourteen breasts too, poor dear. After combing through a book of hopeless possibilities, guess who she spots- June. So she sends her johnsons, and their attached nuts, at her order to carry out the abduction of June, and it's Shame to the rescue, where he meets some quite weird characters, on the way. The bouncing balls and penises are great to watch, in an "Are you fu..ing kidding me?" way. No you're not mistaken. We have a separate safari team, one a compulsive swearer, blurting out a chain of non stop f words. He hates flies too. If you're into adult cartoons, or are fans of Bakshi's work, this will still entertain, but some of you might be sold short or on a comedown with this, as it not being in the same vein of other Bashki flicks, but still it's a very inventive, and at times humorous adult pic.

Shame comes home and find his mate, June, abducted by...well..peckers! His ape explains in graphic details how June was aroused and abducted by the penises and demonstrated how it...well...spanked the monkey when the peckers aroused June. Lotsa slapstick, politically incorrect humor, not just about sex, but also about colonization ("Africa - the continent where life is spun by a thinner thread than other places"). The animation is fluent and rich, the soundtrack is rock'nrolling and this is really a bellylaugh-a-minute movie. Some people are likely to find the movie quite provocative but this is better natured than Fritz the Cat, which on occation turned quite violent without the redeeming humor, but there is certainly a kinship. The humor occationally gets quite elephantine, quite literary! Highly entertaining. 7/10