By Donald H. Harrison

TEMPE, Ariz.— Madam Travel Agent and I caught the last showing of the evening the other night of Curious George, which probably made the other patrons in the Harkins movie theatre here very curious about us.  Unlike them, we didn't have a small child in tow.  What were we doing at the Arizona Mills Shopping Center a couple miles or so from Arizona State University watching an animated film about a monkey's misadventures in Africa and New York?

The answer was that we were playing catch up with our nearly 5-year-old grandson, Shor, who back in San Diego had been taken to see the movie by his parents twice that we know of . George and his monkeyshines now provide a break from Shor's otherwise nearly complete focus on Batman, whom he wants to be when he grows up.

For adults who are unlikely to watch the film, let me briefly summarize the plot.  A nerdy museum curator goes to Africa to try to find a giant King Kong-sized ancient statue of a monkey in an attempt to bring home an attraction that will keep the privately-owned museum open.  But the owner's grown son, jealous of the close relationship between his father and the curator, sabotages the mission by altering the map showing the statue's hidden location. The curator, who was outfitted for the safari in all-yellow surplus clothes, finds only an amulet three inches high instead of the statue.  Meanwhile, the curator's yellow hat attracts the attention of a curious monkey—George—who, thinking it represents a giant banana,  follows him back to his ship, the H.A. Rey, and stows away. After George arrives in New York, he attaches himself to the curator, then proceeds to get himself into one improbable scrape after another, but luckily monkeys have more lives than cats—or at least George does.  

Because of a  miscommunication resulting from a photo sent on the curator's cell phone, the museum's owner believes that the large statue actually has been found.  Its pending arrival is so ballyhooed that crowds line up to see  it, but eventually the curator has to step in front of the crowd and admit that the statue was not found. But then the nearly forgotten amulet provides a ray of hope, and George and the curator return to Africa and find the statue.  As in many good stories written for children, truth comes out, the day is saved, good triumphs over evil, and there are lots of laughs along the way.  Additionally, the jealous son learns that his father really does love him and therefore, one assumes, the son is likely to mend his ways. Redemption is possible.

I particularly appreciated the feature film's salute to H.A. Rey, who was the creator and illustrator who made "Curious George" a favorite of generations of children since the monkey made its appearance in story books back in 1941.  Even before Shor went to the see the movie, we had been reading together The Complete Adventures of Curious George brought out by Houghton Mifflin prior to the movie's release. An introduction to the book written by Leonard S. Marcus told how Hans Augusto Rey and his wife Margret, both German Jews, escaped the June 14, 1940 Nazi occupation of Paris by bicycle across the Pyrenees to Spain and thence to Portugal, from whence they sailed to Brazil.  The bicycling Reys had  their "winter coats and several picture books strapped to the racks," including the drawings of a monkey whom Rey had named Fifi, but whom  Houghton Mifflin children's editor Grace Hogarth renamed as George.



Here's an interesting bit of trivia:  the transgendered monkey underwent another name change when Rey's picture books were published in England.  Instead of "Curious George," the monkey was renamed as "Zozo" because in British slang, "curious" meant homosexual.

After seeing the movie, Shor told me that there were a lot of changes in the story from the book—and indeed there were.  In the book, George was captured by a man who waited for the curious monkey to find and try on his big yellow hat.  As the hat was bigger than the monkey, the man was able to gather the monkey up in it.  In the movie, a monkey is not enslaved, but goes to the New World of his own free will.  However, another ethical problem is presented in the revised plot: the ultimate carting up of a giant monkey statue, if such a thing could ever exist, would be tantamount to looting another country's archeological treasure.

The movie utilizes digital cell phone technology as a plot device, which surely would be a surprise to Rey, who died in 1977, long before Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi, the cofounders of Qualcomm, developed and marketed technology capable of such feats.  In another update, the movie appropriately omits images that appear frequently in the book of people using tobacco products.  The Man in the Yellow Hat constantly puffed a pipe or a cigar, requiring me to explain to Shor that the book was written long ago— before people knew how dangerous tobacco products are to our health.

Some of George's delightful misadventures are incorporated from the book into the movie, and Shor particularly enjoyed those parts because they were familiar. In the book, the monkey grabs the strings attached to a bunch of balloons and is lifted into the air for a thrilling and scary ride over New York before alighting safely on a telephone pole.  The movie replicates the flight of the monkey, but has George followed into the air by his rescuer, the curator, who gets aloft by grabbing hold of an even larger bunch of balloons. As Shor's mommy and daddy, Sandi and Shahar Masori, own an entertainment and decor company called Balloon Utopia, this episode has added meaning for Shor.

In another enjoyable episode, George finds his way into a rich lady's apartment which he repaints to look like his jungle home. Whenever George gets into trouble, the curator either saves him, or makes amends for his misdeeds--as a responsible adult is supposed to do.  But in other ways,  the curator is very child-like.  For example, he is oblivious to the fact that a school teacher who keeps bringing her class back to the museum to hear him lecture has fallen head-over-heels in love with him.  

Shor, similarly, does not realize that the little girls in his class have a crush on him.  He is at that little boy stage when such things are mere irrelevancies—what have girls to do with Batman anyway?