Funky Monkey (PG)
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This whole movie is redonkulous, and not in a good way. I seriously feel bad for everyone involved in making it. It came out in 2004, but I didn't watch it until 2022. In fact I don't recall having ever heard of it until I got it as part of a four movie DVD set in 2021, which had some other movies on it that I wanted to watch. Otherwise, I definitely never would have seen it. Even before I watched it, I thought I probably wouldn't like it, and considered not watching it at all. When I did watch it, I told myself I didn't have to finish it if it was too awful, but somehow I got through the whole thing. Part of the reason for that is that I saw the name Roma Downey in the opening credits, and I wanted to see her in something besides Touched by an Angel. And anyway, the movie turned out not to be unbearable (though I'd totally understand if anyone else disagreed with that). I didn't exactly dislike it, but I definitely didn't like it, either.

An ex-CIA trainer named Alec McCall (Matthew Modine) wraps up his training of a chimpanzee named Clemens in martial arts and covert operations. He doesn't believe Clemens is ready for real missions yet, but his employer, Mr. Flick (Taylor Negron) disagrees. He gives McCall his final paycheck and tells him to leave. But when McCall overhears Flick talking about sending Clemens to a lab for experimentation, he breaks the chimp out of the facility where he was trained, and the two of them go on the lam. He also steals Flick's laptop, which has incriminating evidence on it. At first, McCall tries to get Clemens to stay at a zoo where an old friend of his works, but... things go awry, and that doesn't work out. But he meets a kid named Michael Dean, whose single mother, Megan (Downey), has a room for rent... but no pets are allowed, so McCall and Michael have to keep Clemens secret from her. But she's a computer programmer, and helps McCall gain access to the restricted files on the laptop. Meanwhile, Flick sends a pair of bumbling henchmen whose names I never caught to find McCall and retrieve Clemens. When they fail, he sends a trio of martial artists called the Chow brothers to get the chimp, but they turn out to be no match for McCall and Clemens.

Also, Michael's gym teacher, Coach Crane (Jeffrey Tambor), wants him to tutor some of his football players so they don't get kicked off the team. Michael agrees in exchange for getting to wear a football uniform, himself. This is because he wants to impress a cheerleader named Christina, on whom he has a crush (and who, unlike her friends, is actually nice to him). There's also a group of bullies who are football players that frequently pick on Michael. Anyway, eventually Flick manages to kidnap both Clemens and Michael, and leaves a note for McCall telling him to bring back his laptop in exchange for the boy. But instead, McCall breaks into the research lab, where a doctor named Spleen (Gilbert Gottfried) is about to perform surgery on Clemens. McCall manages to rescue Michael and Clemens, and they all go to the big football game, which Christian thinks Michael is going to be playing in. But Flick and his henchmen aren't done trying to capture Clemens. I guess that's all I want to say about the plot, and I've left out lots of wacky antics throughout the film, as well as how it all ends. I'd say it's predictable, but the movie just gets so bonkers that predictability isn't exactly an option, at least as far as some of the details go. But in a general sense, how it ends is predictable enough. Sort of.