Mjeteconer Just perfect...

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

utgard14 An African girl (Terry Moore) is best friends with a twelve-foot tall ape named Joe she grew up with. American promoter Max O'Hara (Robert Armstrong) persuades the girl to bring her ape to America to take part in his show. You can pretty much guess how this will go wrong even if you haven't seen King Kong.First big role for Ben Johnson as a cowboy who falls for Moore. He's pretty wooden here but then again he was a fairly wooden actor throughout his career. He does his usual John Wayne, Jr. routine. Lots of "Yassir" and "Ah reckon" type stuff. Robert Armstrong plays a role very much like Carl Denham from King Kong, although a little more comedic. Terry Moore is more Helen Mack than Fay Wray. That is to say she's cute but not much screen presence.Re-teaming of many of the King Kong team for a story that is very similar to that film, although different enough to keep this from being considered a remake. The story is mostly kid stuff and fluff but cute nonetheless. The Willis O'Brien/Ray Harryhausen special effects alone are worth checking this movie out.

AaronCapenBanner Terry Moore stars as Jill Young, a young woman who has raised a gorilla named Joseph Young, who has grown quite large in her care. When nightclub owner Max O'Hara(played by Robert Armstrong) and his cowboy employee Gregg(played by Ben Johnson) find Joe, they persuade Jill to sign a contract and head for Hollywood, where Joe becomes the star attraction. Sadly, he isn't happy in captivity(can't blame him!) and after three drunken idiots humiliate Joe, he escapes and becomes the dogged pursuit of a manhunt, but Joe will come to the rescue when an orphanage is on fire...Good-natured film is hurt by extreme familiarity, since this had been done before and better in "King Kong". Not bad, but mediocre film is mostly good for kids.

flapdoodle64 This film was released in 1949, one year prior to the beginning of the scifi/monster boom of the 1950's. In terms of genre descriptions, it is hard to pigeonhole MJY...like Disney's 'Dumbo' (1941) it is a bittersweet story of a persecuted and exploited performing animal...and like Disney's 'Song of the South' (1946) it successfully integrates animated images with footage of living performers. But I also think that the classic 1946 Cocteau version of 'Beauty and the Beast' is also an antecedent.There is a tendency among modern viewers to judge special effects from the basis of how closely they approximate the way actual film of impossible happenings would appear. Yet we do not commonly judge paintings and sculpture by a standard of photorealism. With BATB and MJY, the special effects should instead be judged by how they convey mood, personality, theme, and how they tell the story.Not only are the stop-motion-animation techniques in MJY a quantum leap from the 1933 classic King Kong, they exceed most of what Harryhausen would achieve in later projects. I make this extraordinary statement because although the Harryhausen's Technicolor mythological films are indeed spectacular, none of his later beasts conveys a personality as believable and sympathetic as that of Mighty Joe Young.In 'Citizen Kane,' RKO deconstructed the agonized materialistic persona of pre-war America. In 'Mighty Joe Young,' RKO breathed heart and soul into a puppet, reconstructing the shattered fragments of the post-war America into a form of innocence and empathy.Besides being an effective fairy tale, MJY is an incisive social satire, with the nightclub scenes being effectively a tableau of the seven deadly sins of man, with an emphasis on greed.Robert Armstrong has a couple goofy moments where comedy relief is attempted, and the sequence with him riding the mule keeps me from giving this film a '10,' but this is a small flaw, and 1949 audiences probably thought it was funny.Terri Moore has a strange face, but she is compelling and believable, and her earnestness makes us believe in Joe even more. I don't want to spoil the ending, but after seeing this film, I felt as though I, and every other viewer, had been given a very special Valentine.

pitsburghfuzz This is the conclusion of what I like to call, "The Great Apes" Trilogy, which consists of King Kong, Son of Kong, and Mighty Joe Young. The three films involve Merian C Cooper, Ernest B Shoedsack, Ruth Rose, Willis O'brien, and Robert Armstrong. For most people, including myself, King Kong is the best of these three films, while Son of Kong is the weakest. Mighty Joe Young is in between. The gorilla effects are well-done, and even eliminated the ruffling of the rabbit fur King Kong had in 1933. Joe is an amalgamation of the King himself, and his son; containing childlike qualities, as well as the fact that Joe could potentially do some damage. There is one sequence which is simply marvelous involving the nightclub that steals the show. The performances are good for a movie of this type, and ends up being a happier film than the previous installments. Also, Willis O'brien's unmatched talents were finally recognized, with an Oscar for his work on this very film. Highly recommended.