Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

You got a baseball playing monkey. You got a baseball playing Matt LeBlanc. That’s about all I remember about this movie.

I don’t think the monkey was supposed to have superpowers but he could throw that baseball like a rocket.

Everything I’ve read about this film poops on it. It was nominated for all manner of negative award and yet lost out to something else. I guess that’s a mark in its favor? It’s not literally the worst screenplay? But aside from this being about a super-powered baseball playing chimp and his human friend, was it really so bad?

I thought it was fine. There were no glaring plot holes. The acting was acceptable. There were a couple poop jokes as would be required by this film’s intended audience.

It wasn’t Playing with Fire bad. It wasn’t the unreleased 1994 Fantastic Four movie bad. It was a simple, feel good movie with a chimp and lovable Matt Leblanc. I don’t know who went into this expecting an epic heart-wrenching film adaptation of a John Steinbeck novel and was thoroughly disappointed but dang someone out there did NOT get their money’s worth apparently.

I mean I probably wouldn’t and clearly didn’t pay full price to see this. In the vicinity of March 1996 when this film was released, the only thing I had seen in theaters was Black Sheep with my mom in February. I’m sure I probably picked this up on vhs for 10 cents at a second-hand store. But it was worth every penny! I don’t know how much of that 10 cents will go to Matt Leblanc and how much will go to the monkey but whatever ratio they agreed on, they definitely earned it.