Tagline: Show me the monkey!
Curious George movie storyline. For more than 65 years, one little monkey has captured the hearts and imaginations of those young—and young at heart—all over the world. Generations have been raised on the stories of Margret and H.A. Rey’s classic creation, the inquisitive little fellow who always seems to get into one scrape after another. Over 30 million copies of his books have been sold—in 17 languages including Yiddish, Afrikaans and Braille—and his original story has never been out of print since it was first published.
Now, this beloved character comes to the big screen in an all-new animated feature film from Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment and producer Ron Howard: Curious George. In this funny and enchanting tale based on the classic books, audiences will discover how George first met The Man with the Yellow Hat and ended up following him to the big city.
As in all of his published escapades, George’s curiosity leads him and his new human friend into a mess of trouble. For his big-screen debut in 2006, the world’s most mischievous monkey is out of the jungle, out on the town and out for adventure. Get ready for some serious monkey business.
Synopsis
In Curious George we meet Ted (Will Ferrell), a highly enthusiastic guide at the Bloomsberry Museum, giving a tour to a group of schoolchildren and their teacher Maggie (Drew Barrymore), who happens to be Ted’s biggest fan. When the museum’s owner, Mr. Bloomsberry (Dick Van Dyke), tells Ted that his beloved museum will have to be closed because of meager attendance, they decide drastic measures are needed in a last-ditch effort to save the museum: an amazing new exhibit, never before seen at any museum.
Mr. Bloomsberry shows Ted his secret journal with a map to a lost shrine of the African tribe of Zagawa. Finding and bringing back the gigantic idol for an exhibition will save the museum! Ted excitedly starts planning for his trip to Africa, shopping for the proper gear and clothing, including a bright yellow safari outfit and matching hat.
But Bloomsberry, Jr. (David Cross), who would like nothing more than to see the museum converted into a parking lot, covertly sabotages the expedition—removing important pages with the location of the idol from the secret journal—just as Ted is about to set sail.
In the jungle, a mischievous little monkey spies Ted in the distance and decides to make friends with The Man with the Yellow Hat. The two play a fun game of peek-aboo before Ted gets down to business. He now finds what he believes to be the ancient idol, and he is shocked to find that it isn’t giant at all—it is absolutely tiny! The dejected explorer sends a photograph of his discovery to Mr. Bloomsberry, who mistakenly believes the picture to be that of the enormous idol. Bloomsberry, Sr. is overjoyed, while Ted—oblivious to the mistake—is crestfallen. He finds a much-needed distraction to his worries when he succumbs to the charms of the playful monkey, and a true friendship is born. When it comes time for Ted to leave Africa, his new friend secretly stows away aboard the ship.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bloomsberry is busy making big plans at the museum to unveil the prized idol to the excited crowd. Arriving home in the big city, Ted is horrified to discover that his simian friend has followed him to his apartment building, where pets are not permitted, and has destroyed an apartment belonging to the snooty Miss Plushbottom (Joan Plowright). As if matters couldn’t get worse, poor Ted is now evicted from his apartment building.
Before he has a chance to have a word with Bloomsberry, Sr. back at the museum, Ted is pushed in front of a press conference arranged by Bloomsberry, Jr. As he’s about to reveal the truth about the idol, the scene is disrupted when the monkey accidentally causes the museum’s dinosaur exhibit to collapse. Egged on by his son, Mr. Bloomsberry fires Ted on the spot.
Jobless and homeless, Ted is furious with this monkey who has caused so much trouble. But the monkey’s childlike charm proves irresistible, and Ted finds himself even more attached to his new friend, whom he names George. With the help of his inventor pal Clovis (Eugene Levy), and an assist from George, Ted devises a plan whereby an overhead projector could make the tiny idol appear massive—giving the audience the exhibit they want to see and saving the museum from demise. But just as Ted is about to unveil it, Bloomsberry, Jr. destroys the projector and blames it on George.
Believing the worst, Ted decides he has too many problems and can’t deal with a little monkey, so an animal control officer comes to take him away. As despondent George is being loaded on a cargo ship back to Africa, Maggie convinces Ted that he has made a terrible mistake in letting his best friend go. Ted quickly realizes George has brought joy to his life in the middle of his crisis and runs to the ship to save his buddy.
Overjoyed at the reunion with his human friend, George shows Ted that the tiny idol is actually the key to a secret map that will help them find the giant idol of Zagawa. Off to Africa, the two discover the real idol and bring it to the Bloomsberry Museum, making it once again one of the city’s key attractions. Ted and Maggie make up, the two Bloomsberrys start a strong relationship and, once again, George saves the day.
The History of Curious George
Hans Augusto Reyersbach was born on September 16, 1898, in Hamburg, Germany. From a very young age, he showed an interest in both animals and drawing. Margarete Elizabeth Waldstein was born in Hamburg on May 16, 1906, and was also interested in art, eventually studying at the famous Bauhaus Institute. The two met briefly when Hans visited her father’s home and saw the young girl sliding down the banister.
After serving in World War I, Hans made a living drawing illustrations for the local circus before he moved to Brazil. There, he traveled the Amazon River and became enchanted by the troops of monkeys he found swinging from the jungle vines. While working in his family business in Rio de Janeiro selling bathtubs, he discovered that Margarete had also moved to Brazil to escape the Nazis, and they were married on August 16, 1935.
In South America, the couple shortened their names to H.A. and Margret Rey, in order to make it easier for their new countrymen to pronounce. They loved animals and briefly shared a home with two pet marmoset monkeys. Honeymooning in Europe, the newlyweds fell in love with Paris and decided to stay there indefinitely. They set up house in a bohemian hotel in Montmartre, where H.A. worked as a newspaper cartoonist. When a publisher saw one of H.A.’s cartoons, he asked him to expand upon them—resulting in the Reys’ first book, Cecily G. and the 9 Monkeys, published in 1939. H.A. came up with the ideas and the illustrations, while Margret took care of the plot and the writing. One of the book’s most interesting characters was an insatiably inquisitive monkey named Fifi who always managed to find himself in trouble. The Reys fell in love with the character and decided that their next book would focus on Fifi.
According to Curious George historian and author Louise Borden (The Journey that Saved Curious George), “Some people close to the Reys have stated that Margret was a bit like George in her antics, in her zest for life. The executor of the Rey estate told me that Margret actually posed on a few occasions for Hans when he was doing his illustrations. She would put her finger in her mouth or tilt her head a certain way.
Margret was a bit stocky and a bit short, and so she became George on occasion.”Hans also drew from other characters in his life. The Man with the Yellow Hat, according to Borden, “was loosely modeled after an absent-minded professor friend that they [the Reys] knew—a man who had gone to school with Hans in Germany.”
As the Nazis advanced toward Paris in the blitzkrieg of May 1940, the couple, both German-born Jews, decided to flee to America where Margret’s sister lived. Hans quickly cobbled together two bicycles out of spare parts for their getaway, and they escaped only hours before the Nazis invaded the city. Traveling with only a few clothes, bread and cheese and five manuscripts that included their latest book, The Adventures of Fifi, they bicycled for four days—sleeping in stables across the countryside. When they reached the Spanish border, they sold the bikes for train fare to Lisbon. While on the train, the Reys were detained when an official, hearing their heavy German accents, suspected they might be spies and searched through Hans’ satchel. Discovering The Adventures of Fifi, he understood they were children’s book authors and handed back their passports and visas and moved on.
From Lisbon, they found their way back to Rio de Janeiro before arriving in New York City in 1940. There, Fifi would undergo a name change when publishing giant Houghton Mifflin offered the Reys a contract—quite rare at the time—for four illustrated children’s books by H.A. In 1941, the American publishers would introduce the unsuspecting world to the mischievous monkey known as Curious George.
H.A. and Margret would go on to author and illustrate seven Curious George books, spending a year laboring over each to achieve the perfect look and tone. Many of the Reys’ own interests and adventures found their way into the Curious George books. Both avid animal lovers, their first stop whenever they visited a new city was the zoo. Hans, just like The Man with the Yellow Hat, smoked a pipe. Just like George would in their books, the Reys’ lived among palm trees in Brazil, rode out of Paris on bicycles and left Europe on an ocean liner.
At the core of each of the books was the same general premise upon which readers came to rely: The Man with the Yellow Hat would leave George alone in the house, warning him to be careful; not being able to help himself, George would follow his curiosity into trouble. Wild adventures would ensue.
Perhaps one key to his enduring popularity is that George appeals to the desire in all of us to break the rules (just a little) in order to satisfy our curiosity. As Margret Rey observed, “George can do what kids can’t do. He can paint a room from the inside. He can hang from a kite in the sky. He can let the animals out of their pens on a farm. He can do all these naughty things that kids would like to do.”
For example, in Curious George Rides a Bike, he’s supposed to deliver newspapers, but instead makes boats out of all the papers, wrecks his new bike and causes pandemonium at a circus when an ostrich swallows his bugle. Ultimately, he ends up a hero after rescuing an escaped bear cub. In Curious George Goes to the Hospital, he wreaks havoc when the mayor visits, but manages to liven up things for a little girl who’s afraid at having to stay in the hospital. In fact, it was at the request of the Boston Children’s Hospital that the Reys create this book in the first place, in order to help prepare children for a hospital stay. After it was published, the Reys received hundreds of letters from parents thanking them and telling them how effective it was.
In 1989, Margret established the Curious George Foundation to fund programs for children who share the character’s curiosity for learning, exploring, ingenuity, opportunity and determination—with much consideration given to programs that benefit animal preservation, the prevention of cruelty to animals and efforts to strengthen family values and ties. Although H.A. died in 1977 and Margret in 1996, both lived to see their little monkey become one of the most beloved characters in the history of children’s literature.
A Monkey Without Tail
It should also be duly noted that Curious George, although referred to as a monkey, is in fact, a chimpanzee. At the time the Reys were writing the books, chimps, clearly lacking the distinguishing tails of monkeys, were still referred to as monkeys by most. Even though we are careful to make that distinction today, with nostalgia and respect to the classic nature of Curious George and his creators, we still refer to him as a monkey.
“Every time we diverted from the essence of those H.A. Rey illustrations, it was always frustrating, it was always a little disappointing. Ultimately, we decided that instead of reinventing it, let’s celebrate it.” —Producer Ron Howard
George first began his journey from the classic books to the screen in the early ’90s, after producer Jon Shapiro stumbled across his childhood collection of Curious George books in his parent’s home. “At Thanksgiving of that year, I was in New York visiting my family,” he remembers. “I was rummaging through my collection of children’s books when I came across Curious George. I had such a nostalgic moment, thinking to myself, ‘Wow, I really have missed George and The Man with the Yellow Hat!’”
Fueled by a desire to share with others the joy this duo had brought to his boyhood, the producer found his way to the series’ co-creator, Margret Rey. Widowed and almost 83 years of age, Mrs. Rey was quickly won over by Shapiro’s passion for the project. With a loving warning, she shared with Shapiro that, despite what many thought, creating George’s simple stories was quite challenging. In reality, she and H.A. had painstakingly crafted the books through numerous drafts with her modeling exhaustive poses and his finely tuned sketches.
With the rights secured, Shapiro found an equally passionate producing partner in David Kirschner, who had written and executive produced the animated classic An American Tail. Shapiro remembers what clenched the deal: “The two of us promised Margret that only the highest quality film would be pursued for the property. We knew we had to deliver an A-list project to live up to her expectations.”
Kirschner laughs, “This is one of the last great properties in the canon of children’s literature. Fortunately for us, it has had the luck of being viewed as ‘the prettiest girl in the class.’ Everyone else thought another party had the rights to it…so it was never asked out until Jon and I came along.”
However, several years would pass before they found another like-minded Curious George fan who thought he could provide a proper home for George. Academy Award-winning producer Ron Howard, who, early in his directing career had scored successes with such fantasy comedies as Splash and Cocoon (this was prior to his box office smash Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas), was enthusiastic about joining forces to produce the project. Producing with Kirschner and Shapiro, Howard felt a feature film adaptation of the Curious George books was a fine match for Imagine Entertainment, the production company he shared with his partner, Academy Award®- winning producer Brian Grazer.
“Initially, we considered a live-action version of the film,” offers Shapiro. “But after contacting animal trainers who told us what primates could and couldn’t do, we abandoned the idea. George had to have this embraceable quality as a soft, fuzzy, lovable monkey. We didn’t feel we could live up to the classic nature of a property already familiar to so many with a live action version of the film. While there are some very cute primates in the world, they just don’t look like George.”
The next logical stop for the production team was CGI. Computer generated imaging was coming into fashion during the late ’80s and early ’90s with films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Jurassic Park. Names including Tom Hanks and Adam Sandler were suggested for the CGI voices behind The Man with the Yellow Hat, but still the project in development wasn’t gelling. “At the time, photo realistic computer generated images were extremely expensive,” shares Shapiro. “Based on the nature of the books, we would have to create a 75- to 80-minute film where the majority of screen time was with a CGI George.” CGI work also didn’t lend itself to the simplistic, primary colors and painstakingly detailed hand drawings of H.A. Rey.
With the project stalled, it would be several years before Imagine and Universal would revisit George. Producer Howard knew it was a good fit for his studio, known for making quality films, but he wanted the timing to be perfect. “Brian Grazer and I have always felt that there was just magic in that relationship,” he notes. “George’s unabiding curiosity was not only something that was really relatable for kids, parents could relate to it because that curiosity gets kids into all kinds of trouble. It [curiosity] was also something to celebrate and promote.
“There’s something adorable about young creatures,” he continues. “Human beings, monkeys, puppies, kittens—poking their head around a corner, trying to get in under a box, nudging a door until it opens and trying to see what’s on the other side.” Howard explains, “We’ve looked at it in so many different ways—live action, 3-D animation—and we finally arrived at 2-D animation, which is a little surprising in this day and age, except it seems so utterly appropriate for Curious George. We’ve tried all kinds of looks—changing George, making George a completely different kind of character, just figuring out how George should look. And every time we diverted from the essence of those H.A. Rey illustrations, it was always frustrating, it was always a little disappointing. Ultimately, we decided that instead of reinventing it, let’s celebrate it and we’ll put together a narrative storyline that works well and allows us to learn more about George and certainly more about The Man with the Yellow Hat. This allows us to explore their relationship, but more than anything else, lets George get into a lot of trouble in a very entertaining way.”
“We plowed on through,” Kirschner remembers. “Between the live action, animatronic versions and the CGI, there have been several iterations of George. But our timing could not be better. So many companies have jumped on the ‘all-CGI cartoon’ bandwagon, a lot have forgotten the art of good storytelling through traditional animation. If there’s a project that belongs in 2-D, Curious George is it.”
The story and design both came down to George’s basic curiosity and how to translate that into a feature-length film that kept the audience’s interest and delight. Imagine’s Academy Award-winning producer Brian Grazer explains it succinctly: “Curiosity is a learning curve. It’s about scratching away at something that you don’t know what’s inside. And that can be jarring; it can take you off balance. It can take away your power base, but it always gets you to a better place.”
When it was decided that the film would be created in 2-D animation, once again a series of writers took turns trying to come up with a screenplay that would be faithful to the Reys’ books, while compelling enough to sustain a family audience’s attention for a 75- to 80-minute running time. Unlike other feature film adaptations of classic children’s stories, it was important to the studio that this film not in any way stray from a wholesome, straightforward course when it came to tone or language.
There would be no off-color humor or edginess, nothing at all to which parents of young children would worry about exposing their kids. At the same time, it needn’t talk down to its audience, nor succumb to cloying sweetness. Ultimately, it was writer Ken Kaufman who fashioned the screenplay—based on a story by Kaufman and Mike Werb—that was the sort of lively comedy-adventure worthy of Curious George himself.
The producers had to find a director for the project who shared their vision— while having the animation experience and the ability to pull together all the creative elements necessary to tell the story. After various false starts with other directors, the producers and studio executives agreed to let Matthew O’Callaghan take the reins.
Having worked at Disney as director of Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas, O’Callaghan—who had also served as a supervising animator on The Little Mermaid and created television’s hilarious Life with Louie—brought fresh ideas and energy to the film that impressed the producers.
A father himself, O’Callaghan knew George needed to be accessible to both young children and adults who would be taking their children to the film. He felt it was vital to “stay true to the books in their graphic nature, with their bright colors and very appealing shapes. You have to look back on the books in the ’40s. There were very simple color stylings and a lot of primary colors.”
Director O’Callaghan feels the limiting step for George’s animation was indeed his simplicity. “The choice became very obvious, because the product generates from illustrations from the book that people are very familiar with,” he notes. Traditional animation just better represents and reflects the books that had been illustrated so many years ago. The illustrations are so pure, simple and colorful. Like George, they’re so innocent. The trouble he gets into is just because he’s curious. His curiosity leads him to bigger and greater inventions, adventures that little kids could have—just using their imagination like floating balloons over the city and going on a rocket ship.”
But animation alone wouldn’t tell the story of the mischievous monkey. The director knew the value of creative writers who could weave a curious tale based on the seven Curious George books by the Reys. O’Callaghan remarks, “In reviewing the books, we discovered many things…a lot about how we were going to ultimately style the film. The format for the books was The Man with the Yellow Hat would wake up in the morning, say goodbye to George, and George would go on his adventures and get into trouble. And at the very end, The Man with the Yellow Hat would come in and basically save the day. We quickly figured out that we had to structure the story as a buddy picture.”
Ron Howard recalls of the process, “George is so pure and so virtuous in his drive to find out how the world works. Every single meeting, every creative discussion ends with all of us smiling and nodding our heads. Whatever the problems might be, we leave just still believing in the character and the spirit of Curious George.”
Curious George (2006)
Directed by: Matt O’Callaghan
Starring: Will Ferrell, Drew Barrymore, David Cross, Eugene Levy, Dick Van Dyke, Ed O’Ross, Jessie Flower, Alexander Gould, Hailey Noelle Johnson, Ariel Winter, Christopher Chen, Kath Soucie
Screenplay by: Michael McCullers
Production Design by: Yarrow Cheney
Film Editing by: Julie Rogers
Music by: Heitor Pereira
MPAA Rating: G for general audience.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: January 27, 2006
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