Donkey Kong Country: The Legend of the Crystal Coconut

You can bet that plenty of tykes this Christmas season are beating their hairless chests in anticipation of receiving the latest addition to the videogame world's favorite simian dynasty--Donkey Kong 64 for the Nintendo 64. What made this particular gorilla in our midst so appealing when it hit the Nintendo Super NES system several years ago was the game's sharply rendered 3-D characters and wonderfully creative, as well as relatively non-violent, gameplay. Donkey Kong Country: The Legend of the Crystal Coconut, from the award-winning Nelvana animation team, retains the eye-popping computer-animated 3-D texture of the videogames...and that's the best that can be said about it. As the film follows the extraordinarily repetitive machinations of crocodile King K. Rool and pirate Captain Scurvy as they try to steal the magical Crystal Coconut from Donkey Kong and his sidekick Diddy, you begin to wonder whether the script was written by teams who--perhaps--lived on opposite sides of the globe on remote archipelagoes without telecommunications. By the end credit roll, all becomes clear: this "feature-length adventure" is actually a series of strung together TV episodes focusing on the same theme. Kind of like slapping four Gilligan's Island entries back to back and calling it a movie, except that Gilligan and his shipwrecked mates seem like a M.I.T. think tank compared to the missing links on Kongo Bongo Island. Not recommended. (R. Pitman)