Frank Marshall directs Laura Linney, Tim Curry and Ernie Hudson in this Michael Crichton adventure novel adaptation when, after an expedition to the African Congo ends in disaster, a new team is assembled to find out what went wrong.

Congo was a mid-tier blockbuster that came in for a ton of flack for not being Jurassic Park. Not undeservedly but… what is? Yet it is one of my wife’s guilty pleasures and it grows on me. The male lead is a blank but this allows Curry, Hudson and animatronic ape heroine Amy to gloriously steal focus. All three ham it up shamelessly and you kinda wish the nerds were cannon foddered off by the start of the second act. There are a couple of wild set pieces but it is hard to care about the main plot. It is a flimsy excuse to hang the good, the variable FX and the bad off of. This will probably move up to a cheeky 7 next watch.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Medicine Man (1992)