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Movies & TV

16th Jul 2014

Kings Of The Swingers: JOE’s five favourite movie monkeys

These guys are chimply marvelous...

JOE

These guys are chimply marvellous…

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, the sequel to the hugely successful 2011 hit, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, will swing its way into Irish cinemas this week on 17th July.

A growing nation of genetically-evolved apes led by Caesar (Andy Serkis) is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will determine who will emerge as Earth’s dominant species.

Those pesky humans. Speaking of which…

Starring Gary Oldman, Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke and Keri Russell, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is certainly shaping up to be this summer’s must-see movie. In honour of Caesar and his band of baboon-like buddies, JOE has picked our five favourite movie monkeys.

Seriously, we’re not monkeying around…

King Kong (King Kong)

Undoubtedly the deadly daddy of them all.

KK (as we like to call him here at JOE HQ) first appeared up on the big screen in the beloved 1933 film and, to this day, remains one of cinema’s most iconic movie monsters. Inspired by that earlier groundbreaking film, Peter Jackson then went on to make his own version in 2005 and, while the film wasn’t quite as brilliant as many had hoped it would be, it did provide audiences with this simply awesome action sequence…

Clip via Movieclips.

King Louie (The Jungle Book)

It was a real tough call to pick just one favourite furry friend created by Disney, but The Jungle Book’s King Louie pipped Aladdin’s Abu right at the primate post.

Mainly because he could do this…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JDzlhW3XTM

Clip via tahlee.

Caesar (Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes)

The youngest (in film years at least) of all of our movie monkeys, the current incarnation of Caesar the chimp appeared in the unexpectedly excellent 2011 film, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Caesar and friends (and enemies) have now returned to the big screen in Matt Reeves’ remarkable Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes and, this time around, the inspirational leader is bigger and better than ever before.

Perfectly portrayed by Andy Serkis, the master of MoCap technology, you really will believe a man can monkey…

Clip via Movies Coming Soon.

Clyde (Every Which Way But Loose)

Why Clyde? Three very simple reasons really.

1) Because he’s Clint Eastwood’s best friend. 2) He can throw a punch.  And 3) He can drink a beer.

Now that’s our kind of monkey.

Clip via W. David Lindholm.

The Flying Monkeys (The Wizard Of Oz)

The Wicked Witch of the West used her fearsome flying monkeys to terrorise poor Dorothy… and JOE as a vulnerable little child too. To be honest, we were too afraid to not include these guys on our list of movie monkeys.

Now fly my pretties, FLY!

*JOE flies off to change underwear*

Clip via David Emerling.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes swings its way into Irish cinemas on 17 July and, to get you in the mood for some monkey madness, check out the terrific trailer below…

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