Saying goodbye to Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello is like saying goodbye to old friends. Except as good as they are as actors/people, I haven’t liked many of their movies. Some, but not many. So it’s kind of like saying goodbye to friends who are cool sometimes but only in small doses. This simile fell apart really fast. Moving on.
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I guess Walt got over his dislike for sequels around the ‘60s, huh? The Misadventures of Merlin Jones made so much money the studio almost immediately greenlit another one, even after the firing of its two stars. The gang’s all here: Robert Stevenson, Alfred and Helen Levitt, Buddy Baker, Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, the works. And The Monkey’s Uncle was almost as successful as its predecessor! Almost. It didn’t meet the standard set by The Absent Minded Professor but it was pretty funny, and it did make quite a profit. Still, I’ll be glad to leave Midvale/Medfield College behind for a little while.
STORY
After getting our random dance sequence out of the way real early, we open on a familiar scene. Merlin Jones finds himself once again in front of Judge Holmsby, but this time he’s not in trouble. He’s petitioning to adopt Stanley the chimpanzee in an effort to teach him to think like human. Of course, adopting him as his son is a little much, but after Jennifer testifies as a character witness, Holmsby legally names Merlin The Monkey’s Uncle. After all, as the judge himself points out, if a human can think and act like a chimp, why not the other way around?
Merlin takes his new nephew home with him, and the first thing the chimp does is turn on some old Western on TV. Well, those old Westerns are just uncivilized, which I like to think is a take-that because yes, all that racist crap I slogged through was absolutely barbaric. He switches it to a symphony and the two get into a channel-surfing war until bedtime. But before he can get into his PJs and go to bed, Stanley has to brush his teeth. It’s pretty adorable once you get past the “leave chimps in the wild” thing. The doorbell rings and while Merlin goes to let Jennifer in, Stanley knocks over a bottle of bubble bath. The couple argues about whether Merlin cares more about Jennifer or Stanley while the film drags out the obvious bubble joke ad nauseum. Finally, they find him, clean up the mess offscreen, and tuck Stanley in for the night.
Once they settle Stanley down, it’s time for Merlin to reveal the real reason he wanted to adopt Stanley. He’s experimenting with “sleep learning”, a device that plugs information directly into the subject’s brain while they sleep. In this case, he’s going to play a record of basic tasks so Stanley can learn to be human literally overnight. And it works! When Stanley wakes up, he can shower, brush his teeth, make coffee, and wake Merlin as well as any human can! Uncle and nephew celebrate a job well done with some cuddles and playtime. Come on, Merlin. No more monkeys jumping on the bed.
Things aren’t quite as joyful at the meeting of the Board of Regents. The future of Midvale College is in jeopardy once again, largely because of the epidemic of football players cheating on their exams. Professor Shattuck, the guy who did that weird unethical hypnosis experiment on Merlin in the first movie, goes on this really long tangent about the history of cheating at school. More importantly, the more football players get expelled for cheating, the more games Midvale loses, and Judge Holmsby just won’t have that. His rival, Dearborne, suggests that they get rid of the football team completely. It seems Dearborne couldn’t get onto the team when he was in college, and he’s held a grudge the whole time. Holmsby, who was the star quarterback in those days, goes berserk at the very idea of getting rid of college sports. At first, I was going to get all snippy about how football shouldn’t be more important than academics, but then Holmsby actually makes some pretty good points. Activities like football are important for morale and a focus on exams alone tends to turn students into “memorizing machines”, not critical thinkers. Man, I can’t believe that was an issue back in 1965. Still, the regents decide to crack down on this cheating problem, which leaves the football program in jeopardy.
In a panic, Holmsby calls a meeting of his own at his house with three students because that’s not weird at all. The three students are Midvale’s fraternity president, Don Haywood, and two dumb-as-rocks football players named Leon and Norman. In fact, it’s the same Norman who bullied Merlin and abused Stanley throughout the first movie. But we’re not going to address that. Continuity would just be silly. Judge Holmsby breaks the news that the two football players can’t just cheat with impunity anymore, which means they’ll never pass their exams. But it’s okay, the “Honorable” judge has a plan. They just have to find someone really smart to find “an honest way to cheat”. And he knows just the student.
Said student and his girlfriend walk the halls of Midvale, huffing about what a snob Haywood is. Well, he can’t have that if he’s going to get Merlin’s help, so Haywood comes over to greet them and invite them to a dance at the Mu Mu Fraternity. Suddenly, they’re all best friends! But Merlin hesitates to go to the dance because it would mean leaving Stanley alone. Jennifer suggests they hire a sitter, because after all, being responsible doesn’t mean never taking time for yourself. When Stanley hesitates, she flips out again, accusing Merlin of not caring about her or her dreams of going to a dance with the popular kids. It’s so toxic and passive-aggressive, but Merlin folds immediately to appease her. They’ll go just for a little bit. And now that she’s gotten her way, Jennifer’s all smiles again!
Stanley reads a Mickey Mouse comic behind a Physics textbook while Merlin gets ready for the dance. Merlin notices that the chimp’s eyes are bloodshot but there’s no time to investigate because Jennifer is here. She gets all huffy when Merlin fails to notice how pretty she looks in her new yellow dress, and the chimp sitter’s arrival doesn’t help her mood. The sitter, Lisa, is very pretty and immediately turns Merlin’s head, so Jennifer immediately gets all defensive and drags Merlin out of the house even as he comes up with excuses to keep ogling Lisa. Finally, they make it to the dance, which looks a lot like the opening credits. Now that Merlin’s attention is focused on her, Jennifer is all smiles, but Merlin knows there’s a catch. Haywood’s taking an unusual interest in them, and it’s super suspicious. But at least the food’s good.
It turns out he was right. One of the frat brothers leads Jennifer off to dance while Haywood, Norman, and Leon take Merlin to a private room. They have a proposal for him. Though Mu Mu boasts the best of everything, the one thing they’re lacking is a big brain to help the frat’s collective grades, especially Norman and Leon. Well, that’s not so bad. Merlin’s happy to help them study. Except that’s not what they want. They want him to invent an honest way to cheat, which is so completely against Merlin’s moral code that he leaves. So that didn’t work. And Jennifer is furious about it, because who cares about his moral code? She wanted to be popular! And she just knows he can figure out an honest way to cheat if it means she gets what she wants.
Once again Merlin folds to his girlfriends’ whims and presents the sleep learning process to Judge Holmsby as an idea. It worked well to teach Stanley, so why not the football players? Nobody has any better ideas, so Leon and Norman get ready for a little nap while listening to a record of Jennifer’s voice reading their English literature notes. The next day, Professor Shattuck quizzes Norman on Shakespeare— wait. Hold up. This is the same guy who did that weird unethical hypnosis experiment in the first movie. What’s he doing teaching English lit? How is there any correlation between these two subjects? What even is this school? I don’t understand. Anyway, Norman gets all the answers right, but they come out in Jennifer’s voice! The whole class bursts out laughing, but something’s clearly wrong.
That little oops blew the whole operation, and Holmsby is furious at the failure. Now Norman and Leon have to get a 90% just to pass the course! Their one saving grace is that the final exam is written, so the voices won’t matter. But during the test, the mediator spots Merlin scratching his ear and gets suspicious. The press of a button alerts Professor Shattuck, who is hiding in the ceiling tiles with an extra long telephoto lens to catch those dirty cheaters. But of course, Leon and Norman don’t notice. After the test, they return to the Mu Mus with the good news. They got 100% on the tests! They can stay on the team! Or so they think. The Board of Regents calls the fraternity to announce the bad news. Both of them failed. And so did Merlin. They order them into the office to investigate them for cheating. Merlin’s ear scratch had to be a signal, because all three of their papers were 100% identical! Judge Holmsby does his best to defend them but the evidence is against them. it looks like they’re going to be expelled. Norman and Leon try to thank Merlin for trying, but it’s little consolation.
When Merlin gets home, he finds Lisa the sitter tucking Stanley into bed. She’s the only human ear around, so he vents about his terrible day and all the trouble the sleep learning program caused. Trouble or not, Lisa still wants to try it, so he hooks her up to the same record he used on Stanley (not the one he used on Norman, that wouldn’t be as Wacky). And it works! When she wakes up, Lisa starts getting ready for the day, including drifting robotically towards the shower. Of course that’s the exact moment Jennifer pops up. I don’t blame her for being mad that some other girl is getting in her boyfriend’s shower after spending the night. I do blame her for refusing to listen to Merlin’s innocent explanation. Instead, she slaps him, then marches into the bathroom to give Lisa a piece of her mind. When did Jennifer become such a shrew? As the two scream at each other, Merlin begs them not to upset Stanley, which angers them further. Clearly Merlin only cares about the chimp and not either of them, so they both leave angry.
In fact, even Stanley is angry at Merlin! Only a self-pitying monologue can bring him down from the shelf where he’s hiding. Then the phone rings. It’s Judge Holmsby. The Board of Regents wants to speak to Merlin. It’s time to face the music. When he arrives, though, all of Mu Mu greets him with cheers! The Board declared sleep learning a legal, honest way of cheating! Everyone’s 100% grades are in tact, everyone gets to stay in school, and even Lisa and Jennifer have quickly forgiven him! And best of all, the Regents can focus their energies on the students again. Our first disjointed episode ends with the whole fraternity hoisting Merlin on their shoulders, bellowing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow while Stanley plays the piano. It’s verrrry rushed.
Just like The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, The Monkey’s Uncle is made up of two disjointed ‘episodes’ that may or may not actually be TV episodes. This time, though, they have something vaguely resembling connective tissue. The Regents come together after the sleep learning fiasco to focus on the future of the students, but there’s a problem. Midvale’s running out of money. Yes, again. Dearborne announces that he has the solution, a rich donor willing to give $1 million to the school… if they dismantle the football program. So here we go again. Holmsby and Dearborne start going at it with the same argument yet again but everyone else is on Dearborne’s side. What choice do they have?
Holmsby storms home to find that he has a very eccentric visitor. Darius Green III refuses to leave until Holmsby listens to him read a children’s book bout his grandfather who built and crashed a man-powered flying machine. His grandfather’s failure has resulted in shame for his descendants, and Green won’t rest until someone succeeds in man-powered flight. If someone from Midvale pulls it off, he’ll give the school $10 million, no strings attached. If not, he’ll take the offer elsewhere. Luckily, Holmsby knows just the student to build such machine, so he takes Green for lunch at the campus cafe where Merlin waits tables. Merlin keeps dropping food all over Green but Holmsby promises the donor that he’s a better scientist than a waiter. He pitches the idea for a man-powered flying machine but Merlin rejects it out of hand. Such a thing is impossible. But hey, this is a Disney movie and nothing is impossible, so when Holmsby tells him what’s at stake he finally agrees to try.
But Jennifer doesn’t care about science in this movie. She just wants to go on her date, and she’s really not happy that he’s got more important things to think about than her. His musings about how humans weren’t designed to fly only offend her more, because she’s too catty to understand that he’s saying humans have heavy legs, not just her. He ignores all her shrewishness and continues to do science, because if there’s one thing humans have that birds don’t, it’s brain power. And that should be more than enough to send a football player into the air! So Judge Holmsby presents the problem to the Mu Mus with the promise that Merlin has a solution. But he needs a volunteer. At first, everyone’s super psyched, but then Merlin announces that he’s going to make one of them fly and all hands go down. But Merlin’s top candidates draw straws and Leon becomes the lucky guinea pig.
Poor guy doesn’t like it but he ends up in Merlin’s lab in a ridiculous flight suit for a montage of everyone else who tried man-powered flight. Merlin sees scientific achievement. Leon sees a whole lot of people crashing and burning. By the end of it, he’s ready to book it out of there but Jennifer appeals to his ego. He’s a little more on board now so Merlin reveals the next step of his plan to get rid of his nerves. He’s going to bring back sleep learning, which is more connectivity than Misadventures had. The set him up with a record of Jennifer singing a pretty bad song meant to convince him that he can, in fact fly, which leads into a really awkward dream montage of Leon superimposed over True Life Adventures B-Roll. It ends with him crashing and burning but there’s no time to be afraid. Morning comes and that means it’s showtime! Merlin hooks him up to a car, floors it, and lets him loose, launching him into the air. At first, things go great, and then Merlin realizes he didn’t build the plane with landing gear. Good job idiot. Leon panics and plummets like a stone, and there’s about five minutes of Merlin trying to catch him in a baby carriage. The plane’s momentum sends Leon crashing into a hog pen, traumatizing him so badly that he absolutely refuses to continue the experiment.
Judge Holmsby and Darius Green are enjoying a nice, friendly dinner when Merlin and Jennifer arrive with the bad news. The experiment was a failure and they quit. The judge tries to beg Merlin to stay because the school really needs the $10 million, but no dice. But, and I quote, “behind every great man there’s a woman nagging him,” which means Jennifer has to convince Merlin to stay. Not only is that representative of the gross sexism I’m quickly growing desensitized to in this decade, but Jennifer’s not convinced this is even possible, either. But on the way home, she tries, because nothing can truly be impossible for a mind like his. It’s not a question of his mind, though, it’s a question of the limits of man’s strength. If there were some way to make his subject stronger… wait, that’s it!
Just telling Jennifer his plan would make too much sense, so instead Merlin scares Jennifer so badly she slaps him into the bushes. That was exactly the reaction he wanted, because it shows that adrenaline can make a body stronger. If he can concentrate adrenaline, he can make his subject strong enough to fly! There’s also a weird moment where Dearborne pops out of nowhere, thinks Merlin’s menacing Jennifer, tries to be a good dude, and gets punched for it. But it’s kinda dumb and pointless. Anyway, Merlin gets started on a serum to make the drinker super strong. He gets ready to drink it, but Jennifer stops him because they have a perfectly good lab monkey. Wasn’t the whole point of adopting Stanley so he didn’t have to be a lab monkey anymore? Either way, it works so well Stanley can turn a radiator into an accordion, bend a pipe like it’s made of rubber, and generally destroy Merlin’s whole lab. Now Merlin can save the school!
On the big day, the Regents and Darius Green gather on the lawn to watch Merlin himself fly. He chugs a cup of his elixir then pedals frantically until he takes off into the air, just like Green always wanted! The rich donor is so impressed he pulls out his checkbook to award the school $20 million! But as he marvels over Merlin’s brilliance, a car pulls up behind. It’s a pair of nice young men in clean white coats, here to take Darius Green III back to the psychiatric hospital he escaped from. That’s right, he’s not a rich donor at all! His name’s just Henry! He doesn’t have any money! And that’s what’s really important, not the huge scientific advance Merlin just made. The young scientist is so dejected he crashes and burns right into the hog wallow.
Things don’t look good for the football team, but this movie has one more twist up its sleeve. Mr. Dearborne shows up to gloat that football is gone for good. Just then, he spots Mr. Asterbilt, the rich donor who promised $1 million if he dismantled football. It turns out that donor is Henry, too! Both donors were phony! Suddenly, the two doctors rush through the scene chasing after Henry. The movie closes with Henry stealing a horse and riding off into the forest while everyone has a good cheesy 60’s sitcom laugh over these wacky shenanigans.
I liked this one marginally better than Misadventures, but only marginally. It still wasn’t as funny as it was trying to be, it was still contrived and corny. It wasn’t even particularly engaging. The only reason I say it was slightly better than the original was that it at least tried to connect the two halves, That wasn’t done particularly well but they tried. It’s not as painfully unoriginal as Misadventures, either, which at least made it stand out a little bit. Still, that’s not enough to make this a very good movie.
CHARACTERS
Merlin Jones hasn’t really changed much. He’s earnest, he’s smart, he’s obsessive, he’s clumsy. I suppose that’s not entirely a bad thing. I’d prefer a sequel to keep the characters recognizable (looking at you, Lady and the Tramp), but at the same time a little character growth would be nice. He changed a little bit in that he’s a lot more willing to take no for an answer but even that doesn’t last long.
As we know, this is Tommy Kirk’s final movie for Disney, as he was fired for his homosexuality. However, there’s a little more to this story. n his own words, “I don’t blame anybody but myself and my drug abuse for my career going haywire. I’m not ashamed of being gay, never have been, and never will be. For that I make no apologies. I have no animosity toward anybody because the truth is, I wrecked my own career.” As Kirk himself recognizes, he made some other bad choices around this time, mostly regarding drugs and… um… the ages of one of the boys he was with. Yeah. I’ll leave that there. He’s still with us now, after cleaning up his act and starting a carpet cleaning business in California. He even occasionally shows up to Disney events and became a Disney Legend in 2006 now that all is forgiven. Thanks for all the memories, Mr. Kirk!
Jennifer changed a lot between this movie and the last one. In Misadventures, she was supportive and sweet, if a bit dramatic. Here? She’s a total shrew. She only cares about what she wants, not about Merlin’s experiments. Who cares if he’s in the middle of trying to save the school? She wants to go to the movies. She wants to be popular. It’s all about her. And it’s really infuriating, because I really liked how she always had Merlin’s back in the first one. Now her personality reminds me of pretty much everyone in Peter Pan and I am not into it.
Annette Funicello also ended her time with Disney after this. She continued making beach party movies into the 80s and produced lines of teddy bears and perfumes. Like Tommy Kirk, she became a Disney legend and even titled her autobiography A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, so there can’t have been that many hard feelings. In 1987, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which she battled until she passed in 2013. Annette’s Diner in Disneyland Paris’s Disney Village is named in her memory. While I only really loved one of the films she was in, her contributions to the Disney company cannot be overstated, and she’s missed terribly. Rest in peace, Pineapple Princess. Sorry this movie is the note you’re going out on.
Judge Holmsby is still a terrible judge. In fact, in this movie, he’s dropped all pretense of morality and openly advocates cheating. Anything to keep the football players around, right? I will never understand the emphasis colleges put on sports, even at the expense of academics. And the fact that the same sports vs academics argument happens about ten times, with sports represented as the “Right” way, is insane to me. This was Leon Ames’s final Disney role, too, though he kept acting until 1986.
Norman and Leon are here to be stupid. Literally. That is their defining character trait. They are dumb jocks. And that is all. It’s really weird on Norman’s part because, as I mentioned, he was a bully in the original movie. What happened to that? Making Merlin help the guy who tormented him and Stanley for the good of the school could have been an interesting conflict. I guess that’s too much to ask for the Midvale/Medfield movies. Norman is still played by Norm Grabowski, while Leon is played by Leon Tyler, aka Humphrey in Son of Flubber.
Henry/Darius Green III actually provided an interesting plot twist. At first, his odd behavior can be written off as “oh those crazy rich eccentrics”. But on a rewatch, there are very subtle hints to his true identity. It’s surprisingly good writing for a series that tends to have not very good writing. For example, dinner at Holmsby’s house is the best meal he’s ever had, with the best cigars he’s ever smoked. It’s an odd thing to say for someone wealthy enough to drop $10 million on a college, yet the movie just lets it roll. I’m not thrilled about the portrayal of mental illness, but it’s not as bad as it could be either. Arthur O’Connel was well-known for looking like Jack Albertson, with whom he co-starred in The Poseidon Adventure.
MUSIC
Buddy Baker’s score strongly resembles the one for Misadventures. It’s very light and quirky, serving mostly as a laugh track. However, this time there are actually some interesting uses of music to create emotions. Notably, the flying accidents montage slowly goes from fun to suspenseful as Leon gets more and more freaked out, informing us of Leon’s mental state. But the real stars of this soundtrack are, once again, The Sherman Brothers!
The Monkey’s Uncle theme song has long outlived the movie it’s from. It’s only natural, considering the singers backing up Annette are none other than The Beach Boys! They weren’t famous yet, but they were about to be, making this an early peek at some huge talent. It’s a really catchy song, too, and fun enough to make it onto plenty of compilation albums when no one really remembers this movie. Even Annette considered this the best song she ever performed while at Disney, which is saying a lot. It’s very of-its-time but in a retro, fun kind of way that I’m kind of into!
I Can Fly does not live up to its predecessor. Like at all. The lyrics are really, really awkward. “I can fly like a bird” doesn’t sound like a terrible conceit for a song, but it gives us gems like “I can fly like a thrush in a rush to the sky”. The song sounds like a demo in progress more like an actual musical number and it’s kind of embarassing. And yeah, all the visuals look like that. It’s really awkward.
ARTISTRY
Guys, it’s a Midvale/Medfield movie. They all kinda look the same. These movies are supposed to be cheap moneymakers, so of course they’re still reusing sets and stuff. That said, other than Leon’s dream sequences, the flying effects look pretty okay. It’s clearly model work, but it could be worse. They’ve taken what they learned from their previous work like Absent-Minded Professor and improved upon it to a point where they can show it in color while still hiding the strings!
FINAL THOUGHTS
“Better than its predecessor” is kind of damning with faint praise in this case. It’s not terrible and there’s not much particularly offensive here except for Jennifer’s sudden controlling streak. It’s just very bland, just like Misadventures. There are worse Disney comedies out there but I’m sure there are better ones coming down the line. Oh, please let there be better ones coming down the line.
Favorite scene: The montage of all the horrible things that happened to everyone else who’s ever tried to fly under their own power. Leon’s facial expressions are priceless, especially when placed against Merlin complete lack of concern.
Final rating: 5/10. Told you it’s not that much better than Misadventures.
The Great Disney Movie Ride 