samjacks-84272
SPOILERS ARE LIKELY (not like you frankly give a damn)Welcome back (your fault). Today, i'm ranting on "Jungle Shuffle," which follows your typical "get the princess" story, NOW WITH ENVIRONMENTALISM! It is the year 1960 in southern Mexico, where a young coati named Manu has just been ostracized for destroying a statue his village had been constructing. After a prolonged time in exile, Manu's love interest, Princess Sacha (Alicia Silverstone) is captured by hunters under the employment of the geneticist Crazy Loco (Jeff Bennett). Manu (Drake Bell), now a resourceful young adult, sets out to rescue Sacha, only to come into opposition with Crazy Loco. In addition, Manu and his ally, a purple monkey and self-described martial artist, are pursued by a black panther who also holds a vendetta against Loco for the capture of his own mate.Very little can be said to saves this film's life, apart from the presence of Jeff Bennett and Tom Arnold.In terms of overall character qualities, Manu has to be one of the worst characters across all the films i've reviewed; As a protagonist, this red coati does an exceptionally terrible job at holding this joke of a story up, which owes largely to his poorly-realized "Save the jungle, get the girl" motives. Speaking of "the girl," Sacha is no better than her mate character-wise, just being your simple clichéd "locked in an arranged marriage but loves someone else" princess. Drake Bell and Alicia Silverstone also do an awful job realizing their respective sides of this heroic couple, with the child actors that play the younger versions of their characters having better chemistry than they do.You expected me to mention the screenplay, so here's that well-deserved mention: IT'S ABSOLUTELY TEDIOUS. This film tries to cover it's poor storytelling with a constant flow of energy that is achieved by throwing in one action set piece after another, with little breathing room for our technicolor heroes. The perspective of the coati (especially against the humans) is also used to make each sequence appear more perilous than it actually is, giving a pseudo-bombastic feel. However, this did little to test my patience, because an extremely flat, boring and predictable environmentalist "get the girl" storyline lies behind all that action. Also, despite the capacity to make the action somewhat entertaining, it's also poorly done. In conclusion, the only originality this film brings to the table is that coati are the heroes. Anyone else care to tell me this film's other merits? Oh, wait. You can't.2/10.
