Some filmmakers find their creative niche early and stick with it to the end. Take Jeremy Joe Kronsberg, who catapulted to Hollywood fame as the screenwriter behind one of Clint Eastwood’s biggest hits, Every Which Way but Loose (or, as it’s better known, the one with the fucking orangutan.
Unfortunately, Kronsberg was screwed out of the sequel, Any Which Way You Can (aka the other one with the fucking orangutan), so he decided to get even by writing and directing a movie that upped the ape ante to the power of three. In place of one of the world’s biggest movie stars, he cast the dumb boxer guy from TV’s Taxi and teamed him up with the short rude guy from — and this seems like it probably wasn’t a coincidence — TV’s Taxi.
In Going Ape!, Tony Danza plays a ne’er-do-well con man left in charge of a trio of redheaded primates after his circus-owning father passes away. If he can successfully tend to them for three years, he stands to inherent a $5 million fortune; if not, he’s shit out of luck. Helping out is Danny DeVito, his father’s Italian (?) assistant, and Stacey Nelkin, his super-cute, super-stacked girlfriend who breaks up with him at least 10 times in the course of the picture. Also along for the ride is Jessica Walter as Nelkin’s MILF-y mom, who’s mostly there to rile up DeVito and be robbed of her dignity.
Most of the nominal plot is spent on incompetent attempts by various interested parties to harm the apes, climaxing in a hospital chase sequence. A scene involving an attractive female cadaver seems completely out of place in a movie that should have been aimed at the youngest of children, but is too simultaneously adult and juvenile to appeal to anyone. Going Ape! flopped so badly, Danza had to wait eight years before headlining another terrible feature (She’s Out of Control), but he fared better than Kronsberg, who never earned another IMDb credit. —Allan Mott