100% stupid, 200% hilarious.

The most impressive part of C.I.Ape is that it somehow released in 2021. I found out about its existence because I was checking to see if our good friend Ali Zamani ever released a sequel to Angels Fallen. By the way, he did. It released earlier this year and proved my prediction wrong. But C.I.Ape feels like a film that’s been left on the cutting room floor since 1997 and just recently got enough budget to finish the CG and post-processing. It is dumb as hell and I loved every minute of it.

Directed by Ali Zamani, C.I.Ape feels like a movie made for the Disney channel. The CIA is staffed seemingly entirely by one old dude and a lot of teenagers way too young to be working at the CIA. The children act like adults and the adults act like children, with the whole thing is shot and acted like they’re getting ready to rotoscope it into a cartoon at some point. Everyone is goofy and moves in exaggerated cartoon-like ways, and more importantly are absolute morons to give the whole “taking over the world” thing more of a whimsical attitude.

The movie follows Sam (Scott Anthony Gould), a CG chimpanzee who works for the CIA as their CIApe. Get it? You know this movie was built because someone got drunk and said “CIApe” and decided to write a whole script around the idea. The other lead is Bondi James (Sophia Alongi) who is like 16 years old and is a CIA operative because again, this is Disney channel world where kids too young to have a drivers license can become high level CIA staff. Also did you notice that name? Bondi James. It’s perfect. Bondi works for Chief Marvin Johnson who is played by Brandy Clifton.

I have one question for Hollywood; why does Brandy Clifton have only one acting credit? Clifton feels like he has a lifetime of childrens’ programming behind him and yet somehow this is his first movie. He should be everywhere on Disney channel and Nickelodeon playing the silly uncle/grandpa or inexplicable lead of some big government organization that hires children. Clifton is a treat every time he talks, from his inflection to his Eric Freeman level of eyebrow movement to show emotion.

Pretty much all the adult actors in this movie are fantastic to watch with their exaggerated expressions, childlike personalities, and turning their emotions up to 200%. You’ve got Dr. Devious (Lucas Ross) and the team of evil including Chrome Dome (Angel Rosario Jr.), Queen Evil (Leah N.H. Philpott), Forehead (Mattlock London), and Crimson Ghost (Da Leigh). They’re like teenagers with sass and attitude and sarcasm. Also they have the emotional level of children.

And of course I couldn’t go without mentioning Skip Schwink who plays the big bad guy Alpha Dog. Schwink has a habit of dipping his voice into White Goodman from Dodgeball territory, and I’m not sure how intentional that is. But he’s very clearly a talented actor, and I just think it’s hilarious that the same guy playing a comical villain in a movie like this also played Jimmy Carter in the Reagan movie. He barks a lot.

There’s a side plot about Bondi’s co-worker being an awkward dweeb. Johnny (J. Michael McCartney) has a crush on Bondi because they are both teenagers and she has a pulse and is within visible range. Johnny sends her a text from a number she doesn’t recognize with “hi” and then ghosts her, like all teenage dweebs might do. There is no resolution to this, or I fell into a coma during the 30 seconds it did. None of the child actors are particularly good, but they’re exactly what you’d expect out of a film of this caliber so they don’t exactly take away from the movie either.

And of course there’s the requisite parental trauma dumping like how Bondi’s dad abandoned the family and how Alpha Dog’s wife died of cancer and he’s not an attentive parent to his daughter. At least one person must be dead from cancer in these films. The kids and their parents in this movie have all the relationship strength of two actors who just met each other the day that filming started.

Should you watch C.I.Ape? Only if you want a funtastic time that’s going to make your brain feel like it lost about ten IQ points by the end of the hour and a half. I don’t know how to put my pants on anymore and that’s going to be a big problem when I go into the office on Monday.

Rating: C for chimpanzee