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It’s been years since I thought a G-rated movie was worth the ticket price. Curious George was worth the price of the ticket, the soda, the popcorn, the gum stuck to my shoe, and much more. This was a great movie for the family. Our five-year-old was completely engrossed for the entire movie.
The plot is a bit under-complicated, to say the least. Ted (Will Ferrell) is a museum tour guide who is clueless that a teacher (Drew Barrymore) who brings her class every week has a crush on him. The museum is about to go out of business due to lack of attendance until its owner (Dick Van Dyke) and the tour guide hatch a plan to find a long-lost giant statue of an idol and bring it back to the museum.
Along the way, the tour guide is transformed into the famous “Man in the Yellow Hat” and finds the star of the movie, Curious George. In the jungle they find an idol that’s not quite what they expected and Ted heads back to America feeling like a failure. George stows away on the ship and manages to find Ted once the ship docks. The two of them get into a number of misadventures on the way to becoming heroes, saving the museum, and getting the girl.
The star of the movie, Curious George, never says a word and has a face more like a small boy than a monkey. In many ways, George is like a three-year-old having fun discovering the world around him. Will Ferrell does a great job of tossing out one-liners, but I remember the Man in the Yellow Hat being smarter in the books than he is in the movie. All of the other characters are just window dressing, as the movie is really about the friendship between George and Ted.
The best part of the movie is there are no double meanings, and no sexually explicit or pop-culture references to keep adults interested. This is a simple, clean movie that you can feel good taking your kids to see. The art is not the slick Pixar style of animation. Instead, it is the rapidly dying hand-drawn and painted art that adults grew up on. It is a perfect fit for this movie. It felt like you were watching the Curious George books come to life on the screen.
Take the family to see this movie—you won’t regret it.
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