Fringe Show Reviews

Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION

Surf Chimps

Written by: J.D. Renaud

Presented by: The Placeholder Show

Venue 7: The Cinematheque

Our Rating: Your Average Rating:

07/22/2012 3:32 PM | Comments: 0

Winnipeg playwright J.D. Renaud launches a movie geek’s investigation into the entirely unworthy “lost film” Surf Chimps, one of those puerile ’80s kid flicks about an unlikely friendship between a troubled punk and a crazy surfing chimpanzee. And if you think that’s too stupid a concept to believe, Renaud screens clips from a handful of primate movies that really exist.

Renaud does his best to reproduce the movie on the fringe stage with the help of Melanie Dahling as the irritatingly spunky “Kid Who Learns a Thing,” Bill Pats as the belligerent plot-driver “The Antagonist” and Quinn Greene, manfully suiting up in the monkey suit as Surf Chimp.

The hour-long comedy incorporates music, cardboard sets and an elaborate video presentation. The sheer abundance of material sometimes threatens the oft-chaotic production with a wipeout. But the cast gets through it all with admirable aplomb, delivering a bitch-slap to Hollywood-movie cliché with stinging accuracy.

— Randall King

From the Fringe program:

Surf Chimps is the classic film about a chimp who surfs, the kid he teaches and the evil man who tries to keep them apart.

Too bad it was never finished.

This show compiles the incomplete elements that led to the inception and demise of Surf Chimps. Using found script pages, audition footage, musical montages and other behind-the-scenes evidence, the most complete and cohesive presentation to date of this lost piece of primate-based cinematic history can finally be told.

http://www.theplaceholdershow.com/surfchimps/

Recommended For: Mature Audience

Length: 60 min

Tickets: $8

Discount Tickets: $7 for Matinees

Warnings: Subject Matter, Language, Gunshots, Strobe Lights

History

Updated on Sunday, July 22, 2012 at 3:32 PM CDT:
Adds review

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