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5.9/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.9/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Farmer Al Falfa's Ape Girl remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have exactly six minutes to waste and love dusty, weirdly chaotic silent cartoons, then yes, this is worth a quick look. Animation history nerds will find it fascinatingly crude, but anyone expecting actual logic or, you know, jokes that make sense will probably turn it off after thirty seconds. 🐵
It is just incredibly bizarre. The setup is basically about this "Ape Girl" who is supposedly a total beauty, though she mostly looks like a regular monkey wearing a tiny skirt and some very thick lipstick.
She spends the first half of the cartoon swinging on vines that seem to be attached to literally nothing. The background loop is so fast you can actually count the same three rocks passing by over and over again. It is mesmerizing in a lazy way.
Then Farmer Al Falfa shows up with his nameless sidekick. They look less like explorers and more like two guys who got lost on the way to a completely different movie. Al Falfa has this massive white beard that seems to move independently of his face when he gets scared.
The "conquering" part of the story is where things get really wild. There is no romance here, folks. She basically just beats him up, and suddenly they are married. Talk about a fast-paced relationship.
"The sidekick just stands there watching the whole thing happen with this completely blank expression. It is hilarious."
It weirdly reminded me of The Monkey Talks, mostly because of how comfortable old cinema was with the whole "humans marrying primates" joke. People back then really loved that gag for some reason.
The print I saw was super scratchy, which honestly adds to the charm. If you try to watch this seriously, you will have a bad time. But as a relic of a time when animators were just making stuff up as they went? It is kind of great.
