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| Released: |
2011 |
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| Genre: |
DOCUMENTARY
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| Origin: |
UK/ US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
100 |
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Project Nim would make a good second half of a double-bill with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. |
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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It’s a documentary by Oscar winning Brit James Marsh (Man On Wire) about a chimp, mischievously named Nim Chimpsky, brought up like a human by a Columbia University researcher.
Nim’s a cute little chap, but gradually a darker truth emerges: that he has aspects to his personality that humans ignore at their, and his, peril. It’s the same message that underlay Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, about a chap who befriended bears and was eaten by one.
The truth that animals are not people won’t surprise anyone who’s ever sought to understand their cat or dog, but it’s welcome nonetheless: a valuable corrective to all those family films and child-friendly documentaries, many of them by Disney, that sentimentalise – and patronise - wild animals by trying to turn them into quirky, mentally subnormal humans.
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