"FREE ANDRE CHECKS IN TROUBLE"

A favorite movie type from my childhood was the “animal/kid team-up”. It’s a quasi-genre that brings back many happy memories of VHSes, video stores, and check-out lines at supermarkets, which were often lined with these kinds of movies. The “animal-kid team-up” is what it sounds like. A story that pairs up a kid (or kids) with some member of the animal kingdom. The kid and the animal form a bond, and through this friendship, the kid grows and matures. Some classic examples are Lassie Come Home and that perennial tear-yanker, Old Yeller. 

I don’t know if they really make this genre any more. Maybe the omnipresence of Air Buddies spin-offs diluted the market to a point of collapse. Nick and I decided to look back at some “animal/kid team-up” movies from the 90s. 

 

First up, Nick and I chat about the film we feel represents the apotheosis of the genre: Free Willy. It’s a movie we grew up with and watched over and over again into adulthood. Unless you’ve been under a rock since 1993, Free Willy is the story of an orphaned runaway who befriends a captive killer whale. Starring Jason James Richter, Lori Petty, August Schellenberg, and Michael Madsen. 

Next we dive into a film that’s probably the least well known of the four we discuss in this episode. Andre is based on the true story of a little girl who rescues, raises, and befriends an orphaned seal pup. While neither Nick or myself watched Andre in many, many years, we both remembered when we first saw it. During rainy days at Mackay Elementary School, us kids remained inside the school gym for recess. The lunch ladies, no doubt in a desperate attempt to keep us quiet, would show movies on a big, boxy TV. Andre was one they’d frequently “screen” for us. 

Mackay School was a very, very long time, and we couldn’t recall many specifics about the movie. After rewatching it for the first time in years, Nick and I were both happily stunned by what excellent quality Andre is. (We were equally surprised by how dramatic and serious it also was.) Starring Tina Majorino, Keith Carradine, and Joshua Jackson. 

We briefly discussed Dunston Checks In, that whimsical fable about an orangutan’s “hilarious” misadventures in an upscale Manhattan hotel, on the podcast before. They often advertised it at the start of many VHS tapes that we owned. But amazingly, neither of us watched it until the start of this year. We go into far more detail about Dunston Checks In, marveling at the impressive cast, which includes everyone from Faye Dunaway to Jason Alexander to Paul Reubens aka Pee-wee Herman. 

Lastly, a film quixotically called Monkey Trouble. We never heard of this film, and only watched it because of the poster: Thora Birch in a backwards hat, looking thunderstruck at a pick-pocket monkey, showing off his stolen watches. That’s really all the summary you need to know. Besides Thora Birch, the cast somehow includes Mean Street’s Harvey Keitel, who spends much of the film bedecked as a pirate. 

We had great fun reminiscing, ranting, analyzing, and killing time talking about these films. We hope you check out the episode. 

-T.Z.