With Earth, Oceans, African Cats and now Chimpanzee, Disney, via specialty distribution arm DisneyNature, has carved out a nice nature documentary niche theatrically pegged to annual Earth Day celebrations. Its latest effort is a genuinely heartwarming and astonishingly intimate feature that engagingly locates the parallel drama, sadness, curiosity and uplift of the animal kingdom.



Chimpanzee takes as its subject a wild group of the animals living in the Ivory Coast, and focuses in particular on a newborn chimp named Oscar, showing him playing with his fellow primates and also trying to learn the ins and outs of jungle life. Shot over the course of four years, a 10-hour car ride and two more hours of hiking into the woods from the nearest airport, the film is full of amazing footage. Scenes of the chimpanzees plotting out an attack on tree-dwelling monkeys (they aren’t exclusively herbivores, after all) is fascinating, but the most arresting sequences come by way of the group’s creation and use of tools to extract ants from an underground colony or smash open nuts. These behaviors, of course, mirror humankind traits so closely that they — and especially the wordless observance, replication and refinement by young Oscar — unlock something deep and profound within a viewer’s heart. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (DisneyNature, G, 78 minutes)