Excellent, a Must See

A Disappointing Continuation

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

On the family farm, handsome "Charlotte's Web" reader Matt LeBlanc (as Jack "Deuce" Cooper) sleeps with his big dog. A strong pitching arm gets Mr. LeBlanc on the "Santa Rosa Rockets" team. After a slow start, LeBlanc is ordered to room with Edward "Ed" Sullivan, a large chimpanzee who winds up playing third base for the season. "Ed" doesn't monkey around, and is soon the team's star player. LeBlanc is nonplussed by the chimp, but see if they don't soon share bed and bathroom..."Ed" eventually helps LeBlanc play hide the banana with attractive Jayne Brook (as Lydia), picking up his cues from her precociously cute daughter Doren Fein (as Lizzie). Monkey see, monkey do. Everything here is cute but the monkey. But, with the lamest material to work with, the monkey had to be cute. Highlighted by brown teeth and red eyes, "Ed" looks like he belongs in a horror movie, and often sounds like he's passing gas. Otherwise, this might have appealed to young children.** Ed (3/15/96) Bill Couturie ~ Matt LeBlanc, Jayne Brook, Jack Warden, Bill Cobbs

"Oh great," you think. "another guy giving it a high rating for this beep just to be contrary. Ah-yawn." Well, maybe. It depends on your perspective, and I'm sincere in my belief that there's something about this movie that transcends it's own badness. From the look of the TV spots over a decade ago, it seemed like it was so horrible, by all accounts, that it SHOULDN'T exist! Anyway, me and my brother relived Ed-mania on premium cable the other night, and something odd struck me. Is it possible that this movie is a satire on what Hollywood thinks the lowest common denominator enjoys? Sports? Check. The show Friends? Cast member that the sports bar crowd fancies as their ideal self is in tow. A primate dressing like a person? We'll do you one recursion better. A person dressed as a primate dressing like a person.The Chuck Jones cartoon sound effects are there, transforming the shock of violence and injury into temporary and absurd conditions. The spirit of the Munsters, a satire on immigrants living in American suburbia, arises in unnecessary fast-tracking film techniques to make this world more cartoon-like and "sped up" during moments of intensity.The American ideals are constantly lampooned upon, sometimes in ways we're so used to living here that we don't immediately notice them. It's very telling throughout the picture, but I'll only focus on some of the final scenes, which is everything that follows a car chase (I mean, after all, car chases are part and parcel in crazy American life).A girl child prays to God at the eve of the "big game" to spare the life of the chimp in the hospital bed. As soon as she lays the chimp's pitcher mitt on his lap to go blithely get a drink of some apple juice (or something, I was distracted), the heart monitor begins to beep in steady rhythm and the once comatose chimp recovers and is eager to go to the big game. This entire drama, from the setup to the climax, is about twenty seconds in length. We didn't know beforehand that the chimp was so badly frozen in the truck that it would resign him to a hospital bed, and that cognitive dissonance is just as intentional as the scene where the chimp watches late night TV and plays with his food, I assure you.Before the final pitch of the big game, a distressed Matt LeBlanc wipes the sweat on his brow and calls for a time out. He runs to the stands and steals a kiss from the attractive woman, and turns to the chimp. The chimp licks his finger tip and knowingly "chalks up another" as Matt LeBlanc shows his dental work and nods in sinister agreement. As he heads back to the mound, he is now destined not to blow the game at all. The woman and a girl child stand in awe as their hair blows in the wind in one half of the shot, and the other half of the angle incorporates the American flag flying high and proudly. Now we have a nuclear family, including a family pet. Except the pet is not a pet. And the girl is not her daughter. Yes, those conflicts with the ideal are intentional. It's pointing out an absurdity that even the misfits can pull themselves together and be the ideal if we so choose, but only in movies.There are many ways to take the symbolism in this movie, and all of them are deeply cynical and rightfully critical of white culture and Hollywood, alike. Unfortunately, this film will only be preaching to the converted just as Beavis and Butthead also did in the same era, while sterile and boring masses take it at face value. The roman a clef to that show was that what they were saying itself was not the joke, but the fact that THEY THEMSELVES found it funny. The further recursion was that the kids who took the show at face value were looking in the mirror while looking in the TV--sitting on their couch, looking dead ahead at B&B sitting on the couch.I only go off on that tangent to say that Ed is doing a similar thing, but not getting the same kind of recognition for it because it's a few steps ahead of even this time and offers us no crutch of the "mirror stage". That is, with the no-brow ironic movement starting to wane and with the introduction of the "new sincerity" movement where there is NO shred of irony, this is a very hard movie to place because the intent isn't spelled out for us. Were the movie makers being sincere in the way Ed Wood was sincere, and just didn't know they were making a terrible movie children would hate? Were they trying to be ironic, and try to make a farce of the Hollywood conventions in the hopes that the audience would go through an hour and a half deprogramming session? Or what is most likely in the children's market today--try to make a quick buck off in the risky market of imitating more successful movies, in hopes that parents would accidentally pick their movie up thinking it was a Disney Home Video movie? These are three dangerous prongs to dance on, because nobody has time to think about these things except for young adults that play XBOX Live too much. So the movie is a Chinese puzzle box, in this way...and I have the sneaking suspicion that the Ed team planned that all along.Trust me, if you smoke a few bowls this will all make sense, man.

I first saw this movie while I was living as an Italian immigrant in New Zeland at the age of 10 in 1998...it was a movie that sky cinema proposed,so as a child I couldn't miss the movie of a chimp that saved a Californian minor league team. Any of my future ambitions was so much disappointing. Here we are now in 2008,exactly 10 years after, while i'm searching strange movies on IMDb for a good laugh,that this ''movie'' appears to my memories again and a long chill goes through my spine. I had to write a comment at this awful movie. My mind goes to all the unfortunate people that payed the cinema ticket to watch this bad copy of a movie,and to all the producers that have the face to propose such a shameful movie.I remember that back in '96 this movie was publicized as much as ''Slepeers'' and Robin Williams ''Jack''int he TV movie trailers,just to make the point. If you find funny the idea of a chimpanzee that farts and makes the poor Leblache eat dog food this is the movie for you. I think that the vote up reported is very generous.

Despite persistent talk of Hollywood's "Golden Age of Cinema", movie-making did not truly reach its zenith until 1996. The movie was "Ed", not to be confused with the Whoopie Goldberg abortion of celluloid "Eddie", that premiered during that same year. In "Ed" award-winning documentary filmmaker Bill Couturie employs the technique of cinema verite that lets the camera capture a true slice of sporting Americana... a monkey playing minor league baseball. "Ed" is not merely, as Brad Laidman of filmthreat.com raved, "[a movie] some would say that kids may like," but rather the examination of the symbiotic relationship between man and monkey. Despite their outward appearances, can a clear distinction really be made between the monkey Ed and his human counterpart, Matt LeBlanc? In the film, excel at baseball (although the monkey is the star), both delight in flatulence, and both have giant cartoon teeth. And wonderfully, when the film reaches it's glorious climax, it is the monkey that most clearly embodies our notions of humanity, imbibing LeBlanc with the confidence to again throw his curve-ball, the pitch that eventually paves his way into the Big Leagues (this is despite LeBlanc's supposed ability to throw a 125 mph fastball). Although there may be some factual inaccuracies in the film (in a conversation with LeBlanc, a teammate tells him that Carlton Fisk was a flop in Boston, but went on to find greatness in Chicago), the true essence of "Ed" is in it's spirit... and in the fact that it has a monkey as it's star. Watching this film for the first time, I realized that I was examining the very embodiment of greatness. This being the case, "Ed" became the basis on which I would judge all future films. Forget Siskel and Ebert (especially Siskel) with their thumbs... forget Leonard Maltin with his stars... and forget A.O. Scott with his homosexual, liberal bias. The only scale worthy of film review is the Banana Scale. Based on 3 bananas (because really, who needs five?) this scale cuts through all the other ridiculous criteria such as plot, character development, acting and direction commonly used by other critics in their evaluations, and judges movies based on three essential elements. These elements are:1. Does the movie contain a character from "Friends"? 2. Does the movie contain a monkey? 3. Is the movie about baseball? As you probably realize, there is only one film in history that contains all these elements, and, therefore, it is the greatest movie ever made. "Citizen Kane" by comparison, the film often mislabeled as the greatest, contains none of the essential elements of greatness. Therefore, it is hardly worth mentioning. But a movie such as "M.V.P.: Most Valuable Primate", centers it's story around a chimpanzee that plays for a youth hockey team. This is one of those interesting films that strives for greatness, but lacks certain characteristics that would've put it over the top. One may ask what director Robert Vince was thinking when he cast Rick Ducommun in the role of Coach Marlow when he could certainly have had David Schwimmer. And instead of hockey, why not youth baseball? But decisions such as these have presented film buffs with interesting fodder for years, wondering what could have been if, say, O.J. Simpson had in fact played the title role in "The Terminator", or if instead of Leonardo DiCaprio, director James Cameron had cast Dustin Diamond, as he originally planned? But judging on it's finished product, "MVP" receives 1 1/2 bananas... one for containing a monkey, and 1/2 for being about a sport other than baseball. Not bad, judging against the current, deplorable standards of Hollywood. Based on it's greatness, it comes as a surprise to most that an "Ed" sequel has never been attempted. I have always assumed that the movie has become a victim of it's own greatness. Much like Roberto Clemente, who walked away during the apex of his career, knowing that he had reached a level of greatness that would doom his future endeavors to failure in the public eye by comparison, "Ed" director Bill Couturie knows that another installment would be severely overshadowed by it's predecessor. But taking matters into my own hands, I penned a letter to Mr. Couturie, outlining my ideas for a suitable sequel. The idea goes like this: Both LeBlanc's character and Ed the monkey are playing in the major leagues... one for a team in the National league, the other for a team in the American. By coincidence, the two teams meet in the World Series. Although LeBlanc is now recognized as one of the greatest pitchers of all time, he is no match for the hitting prowess of Ed the monkey. And when they square of, mano-e-monkeyo, Ed the monkey is forced to make a decision whether to allow his friend LeBlanc to strike him out, or propel his team to victory by hitting a home-run, which he can do at will. I argue that this will be the first film that allows it's viewers to really get inside the mind of the monkey... to see his thought process, to witness what makes the monkey tick. By the time the last pitch is thrown, there won't be a dry eye in the house... and those tears will be both tears of laughter and tears of empathy... a rare combination. Although I haven't heard back from Couturie as of yet, I expect a response before too long. Ideas like this don't come around everyday. If not Couturie, I imagine a Hollywood heavyweight director will jump on board. From what I understand, Kubrick was considering optioning my treatment before his untimely passing. Although the idea was intriguing, I thought that perhaps Kubrick would understate the levity in a project such as this... opting for lingering shots, subtle dialog, and a brooding score by Beethoven, instead of the sped up action scenes, screaming monkey dialog, and circus music score that I believe the film "Ed II: Monkey in the Majors" calls for.