Jacob Max Or how to cash by getting people all emotional with a story that never happened...Nothing new you say? True, but whats intriguing is the director's emphasizing of this movie being a documentary. While it is not.Christophe Boesch, director of the Department of Primatology of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and also the founder and president of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation, worked for the film crew as an expert consultant during the filming.What he now revealed in an interview with the SPIEGEL may cause a severe degree of disillusion. WARNING: If you plan on a cinema-adventure of watery eyes and emotional sympathy you may want to turn a blind eye on what is about to follow.To put it short: basically the whole story is made up.Starting of with the star of "Chimpanzee", Oscar. Oh, he is so cuddly! And all of his 4 brothers too! Yep, it is not even the same little fella you see romping about, but 5 different animals that were used for his part. One of the reasons might be, that Oscar died after 7 months of the adoption, as most adopted chimpanzees do.His "mother" did not die in a fight with another monkey tribe. And there is a pretty good reason for that. This fight never happened in the first place, the two groups never even met. The animals "fighting" belong actually to two different species that do not even live in the same natural habitat. They live in different parts of the planet, which is why the scenes are - for the aware eye noticeably - cut together from pictures that were taken over the years, all over the world. So what did Oscar's "mother" die of? Pretty undramatically of a splenic fever.And which part of the whole story is actually true you ask? The adoption. This however is fairly common between chimpanzees, and in a time where most of the web community has seen videos of dogs adapting pretty much anything from tigers to hamsters not really worth an evening to the cinemas.

treeline1 Tim Allen narrates the story of Oscar, a young chimpanzee, who is raised by his loving mother, Isha. They live in a large extended family and the little chimp gradually learns to find food and use tools. All is idyllic until a rival chimp tribe decides to invade their territory.The photography is very enjoyable but Tim Allen was a poor choice for narrator with his tool references and grunting. He nearly ruined the film for me. His voice is too casual and low-brow. I wish they had used Morgan Freeman instead.The soap opera storyline was overdone. In most cases, it seemed the animals were photographed randomly and the scenes were forced into a rather forced plot. For example, there is much drama about a big battle between the two chimp bands, but all we see is animals running through the forest for reasons unknown; there is no actual contact.Definitely not up to Disney standards.

Larry Silverstein This is the story of the baby chimp Oscar, and his clan of 35 monkeys , as they struggle to survive in the jungle forest. It contains truly incredible nature photography of the clan as they interact with each other, search for food, use tools when needed, and protect themselves from neighboring monkey troops.At first, I thought the story was fabricated and edited to where Disney wanted to go with the film. But when you see the filmmakers and what they went through to get the amazing close-up shots that they did I realized that was not the case. I believe this was the same crew that filmed "African Cats" which was another spectacular documentary.Without disclosing too much of the plot, let's just say a dramatic event happens to Oscar during the film, and what happens thereafter is stunning and I'm sure extremely unusual.Tim Allen narrated the film in a very lighthearted way. From what I've read this hampered the film for some, but for whatever reason it didn't bother me.

stewartpauld I work as a wildlife cameraman - but (sadly) was not involved in this film. When I watched it I realised a new bench mark has been set for these wildlife feature movies. Anyone who has worked in West Africa will agree it is one of the toughest habitats to film in - and chimps can be one of the hardest animals to follow. With that in mind, the achievement of getting a unique true story like this - one that brings us so close to the animals in every way - is quite remarkable. I don't want to put in spoilers, but the story is heartwarming and the characters so strong that you could almost believe this was animated - but it is much better than that. This is true life. A beautiful movie!