By Peter Covino

Lifestyles Editor

Don’t monkey around with what should have been a winning formula.

You can’t help but fall in love with Oscar, a cute and cuddly toddler-type chimpanzee in Disneynature’s newest Earth Day weekend offering Chimpanzee.

But the narration written for, and spoken by, comedian Tim Allen nearly wrecks it.

If you have great nature footage as Chimpanzee does, you really don’t need to dumb it down to please a 5-year-old. And Chimpanzee, despite some stellar moments, does just that.

Time for a brief plug here: While I wish there was a way to put Allen on mute for a good portion of the film, there is one great reason to see Chimpanzee during its opening week at theaters (through this Thursday).

Disneynature will make a donation to the Jane Goodall Institute to protect chimpanzees and their habitats for every moviergoer who sees Chimpanzee this week. The chimpanzee population, like most wildlife on planet Earth has been decimated in recent decades. A large contribution to the institute to help is reason enough to suffer through Tim Allen. Goodall was the special guest at the red carpet world premiere screening of the film at Downtown Disney last Friday.

Back to the film. Oscar is the youngest member of an extended tribe of chimps living in the tropical jungles of the Ivory Coast in Africa.

He has a loving mom, who dotes on him, like most mom’s  do. It is a pretty good life for a baby chimp.

But chimps are not much different than humans when it comes to not getting along with their neighbors. And for years, they have been fighting over territory (especially the fruits and nuts that grow there). Oscar’s mom is never seen again after a raid by the rival troupe, and he spends days looking for her before the realization sets in: He is on his own.

What follows has to be a rarity in the annals of all nature films. Oscar is rejected by the other mother chimps in the troupe. He is still very young and will perish without an adult to protect and teach him the ways of the jungle.

The persistent Oscar finds an unlikely ally, Freddy the alpha male leader of the chimpanzee band.

Freddy begins by ignoring the pesky little upstart, who is desperate to find a surrogate parent. But amazingly, Freddy begins at first to tolerate his presence and is soon sharing food, and even grooming the youngster, something alpha males don’t do. The grooming process is a pecking order kind of thing. Those at the top, like Freddy, are groomed. They don’t do the grooming.

The direction by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield and camerawork by Martyn Colbeck and Bill Wallauer is first rate. But whoever is responsible for Tim Allen and the dialogue that sounds like it was stolen from  an animation film aimed at a juvenile audience,  should be sentenced  to a lifetime of producing bad Saturday morning cartoons.

Despite the dumbing down to the audience, Chimpanzee might be a bit unsettling for small children. There is a scene, not graphically depicted, of the chimpanzee band hunting one of apparently, of their favorite foods, and it is not fruit and nuts.  Monkeys are a staple of the chimps diet, which pretty much makes this cannibalistic behavior.

Critic's rating: B-

Rated G