Disney flick tells gorilla’s story
Disney’s story of three circus animals a dim retelling of the powerful novel that inspired it
Humans like to tell stories about stories. Heck, maybe gorillas do too. Some of them sign and paint.
The One and Only Ivan is one such nested tale. It starts in 1962 with the birth of a western lowland gorilla, captured as an infant in the Congo, named Ivan, raised in a human household, then sent to a Washington mall where he spent the next 27 years before being moved to a more comfortable zoo in Atlanta. There he died, aged 50, in 2012.
That same year, author K.A. Applegate published The One and Only Ivan, a fictionalized version of Ivan’s life, told from the simple point of view of the gentle gorilla. Wonderfully moving and emotional, it won the Newbery Medal for children’s literature in 2013. The next year, Disney announced a live-action adaptation was planned.
Which brings us to the film, featuring the talents of director Thea Sharrock (Me Before You), and Sam Rockwell as the voice of the computer-generated Ivan. Angelina Jolie gives voice to Stella the elephant, while Danny DeVito — last seen on the other side of Disney’s anthropomorphic animal divide in Dumbo — plays Bob the dog.
The three animals live together in a mall-based circus — “The littlest big top on Earth” — run by entrepreneur Mack (Bryan Cranston). It’s not a bad life, except — well, it is, isn’t it? Part of the genius of Applegate’s book, somewhat attenuated in the transfer from novel to screenplay, is the way Ivan views his existence through an optimistic lens, until circumstances force him to admit otherwise.
This makes Cranston’s role as the owner the most difficult. Mack isn’t a bad man by human standards, but he keeps bumping up against what’s best for his animals versus what’s best for the business, not least when he purchases a second elephant from a bankrupt circus. Ruby (voiced by The Florida Project’s Brooklynn Prince), arrives full of questions about captivity and freedom that have no easy answers. Disney’s version of Ivan’s story is busier than the novel.
It includes characters drawn from the book — Ramon Rodriguez as mall custodian George, and Ariana Greenblatt as his daughter, whose gift of some crayons starts Ivan on the road to being a “primate Picasso.” (This seems the appropriate moment to point out pedantically that Pablo Picasso was also a primate, like the rest of our species.)
But there are also a host of new animals that add little beyond requisite “cute” moments. So we get a stage-frightened seal (voiced by Mike White, who also wrote the screenplay), a chatterbox parrot, a bunny who drives a fire engine, etc. Again, the effect is to spread the weight of Ivan’s story rather than trust him to carry it himself. (And you know a 400-pound silverback can carry quite a lot.)
Ultimately, The One and Only Ivan may resonate most strongly with very young audiences and those unfamiliar with the book. Fans of Applegate’s story may find it little more than a dim echo of the original. But this is the risk any primate takes when retelling a story. Some grow stronger in their embellishments, while others blur and fade like photocopies.