Good lord, where do I start? Ape Escape is a collection of animated shorts based upon the video game series of the same name. I would say it is primarily aimed at children between the ages of 4 and 8. I am 33 and reviewing Ape Escape, the idea, I guess, is to assess whether or not your 6 year old at home will be entertained, by somehow accessing the 6 year old inside myself, which shouldn’t be a struggle if I’m honest.
The main thrust of these shorts is as follows. A highly irritable white ape named Specter has been fitted with a device called a Pipo helmet which grants him genius level intellect. Specter fits an army of apes with Pipo helmets and attempts to conquer the earth while his ape army cause chaos and wreck his various schemes.
Stylistically its quite similar to the likes of Dexter’s laboratory and The Powerpuff girls, only much less polished and with less inspired character design. It’s bright and bold and colourful, ideal for distracting little ones.
In terms of the content, it’s certainly less annoying than many other kids cartoons, the humour is actually quite surreal and anarchic at times (laser eyed apes sawing the sun in half, joining the U.N. or microwaving a customers ice cream because it’s cold) and it actually squeezed a few giggles and guffaws out of me. Its basically a bunch of mad apes wrecking stuff for 3 minutes at a time, but there’s enough variety in the chaos that the kids won’t get bored after a couple of episodes.
Ape Escape is an above average kids cartoon, it’s colourful, chaotic, fun and should entertain your sprogs well enough for an half an hour or so before mad ape based fatigue kicks in, it’s no Dexter’s laboratory though (but what is?).
Film Rating: 
