Curious George

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The MPAA ought to come up with a rating that’s even “safer” than G—something the cinematic equivalent of Gerber’s 1st Foods. If they did, Curious George would be a good candidate for the first film to be so classified.

This movie is so intensely toddler-friendly, I was surprised that it was being offered as a theatrical release rather than as a TV special or a straight-to-DVD flick like Disney’s Bambi 2, also out this week.

Though Curious George reinvents, slightly, how George and The Man in the Yellow Hat first come together—the monkey follows his buddy back to his States-bound ship and becomes a stowaway, rather than being uncerimoniously bagged by the oddly-dressed adventurer—the movie brings the very simple, direct and charming tales of the two friends to the big screen in a very simple, direct, charming and traditionally animated manner.

And it has done so without pandering to older audiences. There are no hip cultural references, no adult humor, no potty jokes, no blows to the groin. The movie offers up nothing more, really, than a very engaging Curious George and his quest to find a friend.

Parents may, in fact, be rather bored with Curious George; but toddlers will not. The plot of the movie, such as it is, sends The Man in the Yellow Hat, voiced by Will Farrell in a manner reminiscent of Buddy the Elf, on an expedition to Africa in order to keep the museum where he works from being turned into a parking garage. In the jungle, he encounters the lonesome and lovable George. They bond, and the adorable stowaway manages to track his hero back to his Big City Stateside apartment. A series of misadventures threatens the museum, and George is almost shipped back to the jungle—but, naturally, everything works out in the end.

For the most part, the movie works, after a gentle fashion, succeeding well in managing to bring to the big screen the popular children’s books on which the film is based—though they were clearly never written with the big screen in mind. “The books are small, little short stories and you can’t just take those stories and string them together,” says director Matt O'Callaghan. “You have to have a three-act structure, you have to have a singular drive. In this case, The Man in the Yellow Hat’s goal is to save the museum, and George’s goal is just to find a companion. That first goal is the narrative drive, and the other is the emotional drive. And hopefully when we see the movie, we see the two different personalities and we root for them to come together, like a classic love story, or like a buddy comedy.”

It worked for the toddlers with whom I saw the unfinished movie. They felt the emotional bond between Man and Monkey, and were distressed when it seemed George might lose his friend. “If you don’t have that low point,” says O'Callaghan, “you don’t have the high point where they reteam and The Man in the Yellow Hat pours out his heart to George.”

For toddlers, Curious George does offer a first, pure, movie-house opportunity to experience the joy of the happy ending. And that’s both entertainment and spirituality enough for the cinematic equivalent of Gerber’s 1st Foods.

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A Divine Appointment

A Talk with Curious George Director Matt O'Callaghan

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Sometimes, it almost seems that brilliant accidents bring the right people together to work on a project, whether that project is a bridge, a play, a campaign or a film. Sometimes, it almost even seems like divine justice. Curious George is one of those projects.

When a movie studio hires a director, says Curious George director Matt O'Callaghan, it has to “look at whether the director is right for the material.” And O'Callaghan was. As a boy, he loved Curious George. He remembers running excitedly home with the Scholastic Books catalog, and pointing out to his parents the books that he liked—including those about the little monkey and the man in the yellow hat.

Even as a child he loved to draw, and then he discovered that the cartoons that he loved “were actually done by people.” He was surprised to learn that “there are people who do this for a living,” and that cartoons and movies don’t just magically appear on TV.” The die was cast, and he was lucky enough to have supportive parents.

While still in high school, he enrolled in the California Institute of the Arts, which, in the seventies, he says functioned as an animation farm system of sorts for Walt Disney Studios. He completed the two year course of instruction in traditional animation and went to work for Disney in 1981. “My career path has been devoted to children’s entertainment,” he says—and to “old-school, hand-drawn animation.”

So it was a natural fit when Universal brought the Curious George project to him for his feature-film directorial debut. The project was first brought to Imagine Entertainment, where, according to O'Callaghan, it received the personal attention and support of Ron Howard. Universal Studios then came on board, and O'Callaghan was a natural choice to helm the film. “The books were illustrated,” he says; it was logical, then, to also see that “the movie should be illustrated.

“I give a lot of credit to Universal and Ron Howard for saying ‘Let’s make this a movie, let’s stay true to the source material. We don’t have to sprinkle the movie with off-color gags or bodily functions to try to get an older audience.’”

For a life-long devotee of the classic Disney style such as O'Callaghan, the opportunity to make Curious George has been a thrill. Divine justice has been well served.

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