Great Movie Apes: Amy from Congo

Rumor has it that this week the apes will rise. So in honor of our primate cousins and their varied achievements on film, Movieline will honor one great movie ape/monkey/chimp each day who embodies an admirable quality found in monkeykind. Today we honor Amy, the talking, tickling, martini-drinking gorilla in 1995’s Michael Crichton adaptation Congo. She is a domesticated ape who can call herself pretty…and lead you across continents to a lost city and diamond mine. Name: Amy (voiced by Misty Rosas, Lorene Noh and Shayna Fox) Film: Congo Great Ape Quality: Can speak…with the help of a sign language-activated backpack that translates her motions into a creepy digitized voice. While critics may not have loved this 1995 action flick from Frank Marshall, no one could pan Amy, the sweet Mountain gorilla (actually a fictional species) who was domesticated and taught to sign by a young primatologist played by Dylan Walsh. After Amy started having nightmares and drawing the same eerie eye surrounded by trees, Peter found funding to take Amy back home. Unfortunately, the funding came from a greedy philanthropist (Tim Curry) convinced that Amy could lead him to the lost city of Zinj, full of mythical diamonds. And that she did (after a prozac and martini to sooth her flying nerves), only the city was also full of violent gray gorillas who did not share her perspectives on humans and pink backpacks. Have no fear though, Amy the lovable gorilla saved the day for a few of her crew members and and successfully (we hope) readjusted to life in the wild.