Congo / YMMV - TV Tropes

Award Snub: While the gorilla costumes are somewhat debatable, some people argue that the rest of the special effects should’ve been enough for an Academy Award nomination.
Awesome Music: Jerry Goldsmith to the rescue again, with a little help from Lebo M. (and James Newton Howard).
- The movie’s main theme “(Feel) The Spirit of Africa” sets the mood right from the get-go with its tribal drums and chanting. Really makes you wonder why the hell the Razzies nominated it for Worst Song!
Critical Dissonance: While the film has only a 24% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Joel Siegel praised the effects and action and Roger Ebert called it "a splendid example of a genre no longer much in fashion, the jungle adventure story."
- The film opened at #1 at the box office with $24.6 million, and went on to gross $81 million in the US, and another $71 million overseas, for a total of $152 million worldwide, just over triple its $50 million budget.
Fountain of Memes: Stop. Eating. MY SESAME CAKE!
Ham and Cheese: Tim Curry as Herkimer Homolka, a "Romanian philanthropist" who is "Travelink de vorld and doink goot!" The book had no equivalent character. Same with Bruce Campbell. And Delroy Lindo. It's like somebody realized what a lame movie they were making out of a boring book and said "Hey! Let's get some awesome over-actors to keep people's attention!"
- Ditto Ernie Hudson as Munro; the "Great White Hunter" of the group though he "happens to be black!" So damn cool he almost makes the film worth watching for his performance alone. Roger Ebert went so far as to compare him to Clark Gable.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- The scientist character saying that chopping down the rain forest won't change the world's climate. Thirty years later and global warming/climate change is a thing, and Michael Crichton went on to write a whole novel about how it wasn't.
- In the movie, Munro says at one point, "Quite frankly, the twentieth century sucks. Maybe the twenty-first will be better." Since the release of the movie, the world has gone through equally troubling times.
- In the novel, Japanese business is one of the antagonists, opposing ERTS by working as part of a consortium with Dutch and German interests. This was back during the height of the Bubble Economy of Japan. By the early 1990s, Japan's economy collapsed, making it less of a powerhouse today than it was during the setting of the book.
Hilarious in Hindsight: The statement that a 'worldwide network enabling billions of computers to communicate with each other' is theoretically impossible.
- ERTS equipment being described as "amazingly sophisticated", for example a portable computer with 186k memory. By 2020s standards, even 186 megabytes would be considered woefully underpowered.
Misaimed Merchandising: This is a PG-13 movie that features gruesome-looking gorillas tearing people apart and crushing their skulls. It had a toyline courtesy of Kenner, complete with toy versions of said gruesome-looking gorillas. There’s also its Taco Bell tie-in.
No Problem with Licensed Games: Both the Sega Saturn First-Person Shooter and the PC Adventure Game were met with mostly positive reception from critics and players alike. The Saturn game in particular is a Broad Strokes adaptation that keeps the basics (finding diamonds in the jungle while fighting killer gorillas) while not using any of the less popular aspects; in many ways it's a spiritual precursor to Far Cry 2 (you even start by needing to find malaria medication). The pinball machine is also well-regarded, with the biggest complaint being that it was a good game done in by a bad license.
One-Scene Wonder:
- Delroy Lindo as Captain Wanta (see Fountain Of Memes entry above).
- Bruce Campbell definitely leaves an impression in the opening.
- Joe Pantoliano as Eddie Ventro.
Presumed Flop: A lot of people tend to refer to the movie as an embarrassing flop that tried and failed to ride the coattails of Jurassic Park but in reality, while the movie didn’t do as much money as Spielberg’s movie, it actually placed at #1 on its first weekend and made over $150 million worldwide on a budget of $50 million.
So Bad, It's Good: Between the terrible dialogue and a handful of fan-favorite actors hamming it up for all it's worth, it's a very entertaining film.
Special Effects Failure:
- It's quite painfully obvious that all the apes in the film are men-in-suits. At least ILM's matte paintings, miniatures and animation are good.
- Justified in that while computer animation in 1995 could make smooth or scaly creatures rather easily (i.e. Jurassic Park), trying it with hairy creatures (the filmmakers' first attempt) made the gorillas look cartoony.
- Towards the end, there is a short Cat Scare, with a few birds flying suddenly over the group, when they enter the temple for The Reveal. But the hand of someone throwing them, not quite off-screen and clearly visible, makes it hilarious.
Tear Jerker: Amy has a small one when she realizes her knowledge of sign language makes her different from the other gorillas, the very gorillas she was meant to be released with.
Took the Bad Film Seriously: Dylan Walsh is pretty much the only actor for whom this is the case - as can be seen in Ham and Cheese above, everybody else knew exactly what kind of film they were making and acted accordingly.
Vindicated by History: The pinball game based on the movie sold poorly back in the day due to the film not turning out as well as hoped, but pinheads now regard it as an excellent pinball game that failed through no fault of its own. Its rarity ensures not many people will get to play it, sadly, but at the very least, it's now highly regarded by pinball fans who did play it.
Visual Effects of Awesome: The escape from Zinj as it crumbles down because of the volcano eruption is a magnificent display of practical effects, as it combines a set that was buit to move up and down to simulate an earthquake, some really convincing miniature work and super-imposed lava flow that a lot of people assumed it was CGI because of its fluidity but it was actually a very clever practical effect that was later digitally edited to look like lava.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Well, the movie is rated PG-13, so it’s not exactly for kids^note , but there’s a suprising amount of blood and gore. Especially glaring since Mortal Kombat: The Movie was released that same year, infamously also had a PG-13 rating and yet it was nowhere near as bloody as this.

YMMV / Congo

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