Bingo Bongo  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Bingo Bongo is a 1982 Italian and West German family comedy film.

It was directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile and written by Franco Ferrini, and it stars Adriano Celentano and Carole Bouquet.

Cast

Plot

The film opens with the story about how Bingo Bongo was stranded in the African jungle as a baby when his plane crashed (in a manner remniscient and in parody of Tarzan). He was thrown out by parachute at the last instant and subsequently adopted by chimpanzees.

Years later, as a grown man with animalistic behaviour (and still wearing his old pacifier and parachute harness), Bingo Bongo is captured by an expedition and brought to a anthropology institution in Florence for study. Bingo Bongo proves not only to be extremely strong and highly intelligent and perceptive (with some uncomfortable results for the researchers), he also develops a crush on Laura, one of the researchers, and bonds with her pet chimpanzee Renato. Laura, on the other hand, tries her best to reintegrate Bingo Bongo into human society.

Finally, Bingo Bongo runs away and eventually hides at Laura's place, who continues her efforts. At first she makes only slow progress, but a surprise result is achieved when one evening the institute's director drops by: Bingo Bongo not only convincingly manages to pass himself off as a human (complete with fully developed articulation of the human language), he also throws the director off track by introducing himself as Laura's lover.

Because Laura continues to rebuff his romantic advances, however, Bingo decides to return to Africa, with Renato in company, but his efforts are all foiled. In time, it is revealed that the animals all around the world see him as their ambassador to humanity who will vouch for a more humane treatment of the animals, thanks to his ability to speak the animal - and now also the human - tongues. He returns to the institute, where he delivers his message in a colloquium which Laura also attends. There she confesses (in ape language) that she does love him after all.

The film ends with Bingo Bongo taking up his work as animal ambassador - most notably by calming down King Kong, who later attends his wedding.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Bingo Bongo" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools