Dunston Checks In (1996)
★★ — Dunston Checks In (1996)
Dunston Checks In arrived in January 1996, the graveyard slot that studios typically reserve for films they know are modest propositions at best. Ken Kwapis directed, a filmmaker whose career has bounced comfortably between television (he shot a number of The Office episodes) and broad family comedy, having previously made Vibes (1988) and He Said, She Said (1991). The film was produced through Joe Wizan and Todd Black's production house and distributed by 20th Century Fox, with a respectable $16 million budget for its tier. The real production story, of course, centres on Sam the orangutan, a trained animal performer whose physical comedy required considerable coordination between the animal handlers and the crew. Jason Alexander was riding high on Seinfeld at the time, and Faye Dunaway's presence here is the kind of gleefully self-aware genre slumming that became a minor tradition for Oscar-winning actresses in the 1990s.
A textbook example of a late-90s kids’ film made purely for slapstick. Dunston Checks In is forgettable, formulaic, and shamelessly silly. The plot is a jewel thief (Faye Dunaway, clearly having a laugh) hides stolen goods in a luxury hotel, using a trained orangutan as her unwitting accomplice. Chaos ensues when the ape, Dunston, befriends a lonely boy and starts wreaking havoc in the penthouse suite. It’s all very predictable, with zero stakes and a story held together by coincidence and cartoon logic. That said, the film isn’t completely dead in the water, because Sam, the orangutan, is oddly entertaining. Whether he’s flushing cigars down the toilet, mimicking human behaviour, or stealing the show in nearly every scene he’s in, Sam brings a mischievous energy that almost makes the nonsense worthwhile. Dunaway leans into her campy villain role with relish, and young Erik von Detten does a decent job as the put-upon kid. But the rest of the cast (especially the snobby hotel staff) are stuck delivering tired jokes and over-the-top reactions. It’s not good, but it’s not entirely joyless either. Just mindless, glossy fluff, the kind of movie that aired endlessly on Saturday mornings and vanished from memory by Sunday. Worth a chuckle or two, thanks entirely to the ape. But as actual cinema it barely holds together. A 2-star relic of a bygone era of kids’ comedy.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 1996 | Watched: 2025-08-12
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