The Most Valuable Primate Has Just Gone Vertical!
2001-10-05
N/A
87 min
MVP 2 opens with the lovable Jack being ousted from his hockey team, the Seattle Simians, and having to hit the road after being falsely accused of league misconduct. Jack ends up in the city, where he's befriended by Ben, a homeless skateboarder, and Ollie, a skate shop owner. Jack proves to be as adept at mastering the half-pipe as he does at delivering a slap shot, and before long, he and Ben are crashing amateur skateboarder competitions all over the country.
Still not all that unwatchable, though <em>'MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate'</em> is a clear downgrade from the original.
I still have nothing (aside from the standard 'using animals for entertainment' questionables, obvs) to dislike about these, they are so plain and unproblematic in movies terms that it's kinda impossible for me to get bored or anything with them.
With that said, this is an objectively poor movie; especially when compared with the first film from the trilogy. The human actors are a step down, the chimps clearly aren't as well trained/convincing and the plot is more broken apart; a skateboarding chimp is quirky enough to be interesting, though mashing it alongside the ice hockey stuff doesn't work.
The bits of the story with the characters of Scott Goodman and Richard Karn are, by process of elimination, the flick's biggest strength, though the former's low acting ability does hinder events onscreen - no hate on the kid actor, of course.
Next up, the woefully titled <em>'MXP: Most Xtreme Primate'</em> - they couldn't have at least tied to stick with the MVP naming, eh?
