MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*
Now this is more like the usual Asylum output. APE VS. MONSTER surprised me by interpolating a typical cheesy giant-monster battle with a decent melodrama for the human viewpoint character. So did Asylum bring back either the writer or director of that film for a follow-up? Of course not. Instead they drafted a guy named Marc Gottleib to both write and direct-- the guy also responsible for the godawful 2025 ARMAGEDDON.
I don't blame Gottleib for not using the same human cast in this sequel, and maybe he even earns a little credit for keeping MECHA-APE loosely in continuity with its predecessor. Abraham the Ape still has the same backstory: he's an ordinary Earth-ape sent into space as part of an experiment and then infected with alien DNA so that he grew up to Kong-size and went on a rampage. In MECHA-APE, the government has set up the big simian in his own wildlife preserve. I wasn't sure exactly where the preserve was until it was eventually established to be within the States, apparently somewhere near Chicago since that becomes a plot-point. Again Abe has a female protector as he did in MONSTER, but this time it's a scientist named Sloane (Anna Telfer). But the government isn't investing its dough in Abe out of the goodness of its collective heart. Sloane, along with some vague scientific project, have constructed Mecha-Ape by using Abraham as a model. Why did the US government think it worthwhile to build a giant robot ape with artillery in its arms? Who knows? At least in KING KONG ESCAPES, the evil scientist had a comprehensible reason for making a Mecha-Kong.
In fact, for a movie filled with actors mouthing Bad Exposition, no one has much in the way of motivation. Some East European spies, aided by what one presumes are some radicalized diverse Americans, manage to take remote control of Mecha-Ape, stick a nuclear bomb in him, and send him lumbering toward Chicago. What's their purpose in blowing up Chicago? Heck if I know. Sloane manages to jump off a building onto the robot's metal back without breaking even one bone, but though she can't deprogram the mecha, she can draw her anthropoid buddy Abe into a fight with Mecha-Ape. It's not the worst CGI behemoth-battle I've ever seen, but it's still forgettable.
All of the actors were unknowns to me except for the obligatory "name" performer whom almost no one cares about any more-- this time, Tom Arnold in an absolutely nothing role.
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