Perfectly adorable

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

And with lollipop guild leader Billy Curtis as one of the pygmy leaders, the similarities increase. This is the second to last Jungle Jim movie (minus that name because of legal issues concerning the character) and it is not an entry too late, for the plots have reached their nadir on this one. The pygmy's obviously are not either real pygmy's or moon men, just a band of little people living a jungle "Terror of Tiny Town" under the thumb of an evil high priestess searching for a high priest and using a poison with an anecdote ready to serve once she receives the package of her heart's desire. Billy Curtis, as the captured pygmy, is treated with little respect, used as entertainment and patronizing condescension by the oh too adorable chimpanzees Kimba. You know you're considered the lowest of the low when you're the prop of a monkey! Kimba is talented, but if he (or she) could be trained to roll her eyes back because of the outrageously bad story, then he (or she) would be worthy of an Oscar!

Johnny Weissmuller (himself), Jean Byron (Ellen Mackey), Helen Stanton (Oma), Bill Henry (Bob Prentice), Myron Healey (Mark Santo), Billy Curtis (Damu), Michael Granger (Nolimo), Frank Sully (Max), Benjamin F. Chapman jr (Marro), Kenneth L. Smith (Link), Ed Hinton (Regan), and "Kimba".Director: CHARLES S. GOULD. Screenplay: Dwight V. Babcock, Jo Pagano. Allegedly based on a story by Jo Pagano inspired by the comic strip Jungle Jim, created by Alex Raymond. Actually based on the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton (the screen rights to which were owned by Columbia). Photography: Henry Freulich. Film editor: Henry Batista. Art director: Paul Palmentola. Music directed by Mischa Bakaleinikoff. Assistant director: Eddie Saeta. Special effects: Jack Erickson. Unit manager: Leon Chooluck. Sound recording supervisor: Josh Westmoreland. Western Electric Sound System. Producer: Sam Katzman. Original theatrical release prints processed in Sepia.Copyright 1955 by Columbia Pictures Corp. No New York opening. U.S. release: April 1955 Australian release: 26 January 1956. 6,251 feet. 69 minutes. Censored to 67 minutes in Australia in order to qualify for a General or Universal exhibition certificate SYNOPSIS: Johnny Weissmuller (himself) escorts Ellen Mackey (Jean Byron), an expert Egyptologist, into the country of the pygmy Moon Men, where they are captured. Taken to the underground temple of the Moon Goddess, they discover that Priestess Oma (Helen Stanton) has discovered the secret of eternal life.NOTES: Number 15 of the 16-picture "Jungle Jim" series, is a re-make of "Lost Horizon" and "She".COMMENT: One of the least impressive entries in the series, this inferior re-make of "Lost Horizon" has little more than curiosity to recommend it. Although it opens in the same fashion as most of the other entries — with a montage of stock footage laboriously described by an off- camera narrator — and then teases us with a tiny bit of action, it quickly deteriorates into a repetitiously tepid series of doleful antics from the chimp, followed by even more tedious and indescribably yawnful dialogue. "You see, for several years," an unlikely female scientist yaks off, continuing to mouth away, bending Johnny Weissmuller's ears right back, until she finally ends up with "secrets of life." Still all in the one drearily dull, relentlessly static two- shot take, the scene continues on its mercilessly lackluster way with the entrance of two of the most insipid stooges in the world, Bill Henry and Myron Healey.SHE: They even claim to have discovered the secret of eternal life.BILL: You mean they could live for ever?If you think that little exchange a high point of low conversation, how about Johnny's undertaking later on into the action: — JOHNNY: You can't take the law into your own hands. You have my word: — Justice for the death of your son!It seems the screen-playwrights are more interested in providing standing-still, clichéd dialogue than action opportunities. Johnny Weissmuller in fact has very little to actually do. Just one tame fist fight with Myron Healey is his limit. In this outing, he doesn't tussle with any animals at all. Oh yes, he does pick up one of the midget moon men. And oh yes, yes, he's pricked by a few darts.The tedium of the screenplay — its lack of pace and excitement — is only equaled by Gould's totally flat, listless direction and the poverty of the picture's production values. Count them: — a few mangy moon men, two or three warriors, a bit of who- cares actual location lensing, topped by a couple of underground scenes in Columbia's standing tunnel sets (in which the photographer has managed a mere one or two middlingly effective shots).Drastic cutting — at least twenty minutes — might make the picture a trifle more tolerable. The re-editor should especially target those crude, tasteless sequences in which wild animals are slaughtered with bow and arrow whilst Johnny Weissmuller smiles benignly in the background. Ancient stock items (including a few snips from Stanley and Livingstone) would not be missed either.Acting is on the same flavorless level as script and direction. True, Misses Byron and Stanton are not too insipid to look at, but even they grow wearisome in these tinpot surroundings. Frank Sully's part is tiny, whilst Johnny Weissmuller, even considering the comparative unimportance of his role, projects a boredom that will disappoint even his most supportive fans. OTHER VIEWS: Preposterous and in some respects rather distasteful, this Johnny Weissmuller "as himself" picture insults the intelligence of the most tolerant spectator. — Monthly Film Bulletin.

Jungle Moon Men (1955) * (out of 4) Johnny Weissmuller plays a character named Johnny Weissmuller who must take a female writer (Jean Byron) through the jungles where she's going to do a story about a tribe known as "Moon Men". These people aren't from the moon sadly but instead they worship a princess who just happens to be some sort of relation to an Egyptian Moon goddess. This next-to-last entry in the "Jungle Jim" series dropped that name for some reason and had Weissmuller playing a character with his own name but there's no question what series this film belongs to. I've read very few positive reviews to any of the Jungle Jim movies and many that I have read called this one of the worst. If this is just one of the worst and not the worst then I certainly hate myself for being a completest because I will still search out the other films in the series that I haven't seen even if that means having to torture myself with more madness. It's strange but on a technical level this is perhaps the best of the series that I've seen but this is the major problem. It seems like more money was pumped into this film and it's clear to see that the amount of stock footage has been reduced dramatically. The earlier films in the series at least had a camp value to them because of the amount of stock footage and how poorly it mixed in with everything else going on. With that missing here the camp value is pretty much missing and all we're left with is the bad acting and bad story that all of the films have. I must admit that I was constantly losing my attention span because nothing going on stuck me as the least bit interesting. The entire adventure was a joke because not for a second did I believe anything I was seeing. The so-called drama wasn't there because the entire set-up was just tired and silly. The comic relief was just downright poor and that chimp just gets more and more annoying with each new film. Weissmuller certainly wasn't an actor and his struggles to get lines out are quite apparent here. The supporting cast isn't much better but it's very possible they all realized they were in a Jungle Jim movie and decided to just take it easy. There's very little going on in this picture to make it worth viewing. At 70-minutes it's way too long and there just aren't enough fun moments to make it worth viewing. Certainly only recommended to those who must see each film in the series.

For all intents and purposes this is another in a string of Jungle Jim adventure movies, except that Johnny Weissmuller appears in this one using his own name. Most of the typical JJ scenarios are presented except for Weissmuller wrestling some hapless stuffed animal or underwater blow up creature. Otherwise it's pretty standard stuff, with Weissmuller guiding author Ellen Marsten (Jean Byron) into the jungle in search of book material. The moon men of the title turn out to be pygmies from the Baku country, with no connection to other worldly environs. If I didn't know better, I might have considered them as the inspiration for George Lucas's Ewoks, but with faces exposed and not as hairy. You might recognize their leader Damu as Billy Curtis who almost two full decades later appeared as Clint Eastwood's diminutive ally Mordecai in "High Plains Drifter".To give you an idea how much thought went into these flicks, consider an early scene when native Marro (Ben Chapman) is attacked by the band of pygmies in order to drug and capture him. He's struck by a poison dart on an area of his upper chest that was covered directly by his shield! Of course, there must be villains, and this time out Myron Healey does the honors as the evil Santo. He and his gang follow Johnny into the Baku country in hopes of discovering a large cache of diamonds. The trail ends at the cave of the high priestess Oma (Helen Stanton), revealed to have discovered the secret of eternal life. That gives one a pretty good idea of how Oma meets her demise - hint, she can't leave the cave into direct sunlight - Oops! In keeping with the Jungle Jim tradition, a North American mountain lion makes an appearance in the film, demonstrating that wild animals in pictures don't honor geographic boundaries. As for Johnny's sidekick, he's got a chimp named Kimba, who could have been Tamba from his earlier pictures, they all look alike you know. Or maybe not, Tamba was pretty adventurous, but in this picture, it seemed like Johnny carried the chimp around everywhere they went.