12- The Michigan Daily -Wednesday, June 28, 1995

'Congo' endangers moviegoers
By Michael Zilberman for TraviCom, the latest entry in the series of abuming building-nowlet'scomeup wit
Daily Arts Writer Unimaginatively Named Evil Corporations. a plot to string them together. As a resul
How's that for an attention-grabbing Everyonehas ahiddenagenda,exceptforthe "Congo" desintegrates into a series of sensa
intro: "Congo"is bad. Jaw-droppingly bad. student and the gorilla, who are happy just to tionalistic episodes that don't make muc
Furthermore, it's not amusingly bad; this be together. Theheroes survive aplanecrash, sense seperately and even less so whe
movie doesn'teven beg forMST3K-style find a lost city in the jungle, meet viewedconsequtively: seeatalkingmonkey
lampooning ora squall of critical wrath. It Seeaman dodge alavastream!Whatelse d
simply drags on with all the passion and Y you want? An explosion in space? Here
grace of an animatronicgorilla. yourpexplosion!
Fully realizing that such thesis pretty Congo Iwould bemore thangladtofind some-
much renders the remainder of the article Directed by Frank any-redeeming qualifiesinthisssleepy zom
meaningless, I'll still try to elaborate on it. .bbie of a film. Icould try arguingthat its four
Let's start with the plot itself, shall we? Marshall; with Dylan dation-of-implausabilities approach, whe
A UCLA student(DylanWalsh)invents Walsh youdon'thave time to realize theabsurdne
acomputerglovethatenablesgorillastotrans- At Briarwood and Showcase of a predicament theheroes areinbecauseth
formtheirsignlanguageintoaudible English nextiscoming up,is what made films like th
words.Oneofthegorillas,Amy,immediately Indiana Jones series (producedby "Congo
startsto complain about nightmares that tor- cannibalistically inclined white apes, witness diretorFrnkMarshall,noless)soendearin
ure her. Thestudentthegenius thatheis,de- avolcanicenaption, blow up asatellite with a Yet the same person whounblinkingly boug
cidesthatinordertobehealed,shemust bere- laser and ride a balloon into the African sun- those ark spirits in"Raidersofthe Lost Ark
tumedtohernaturalhabitat.'Theresultingex- set. fled in terror from "Congo'"s talking ape
pedition party includes: a bizao, Romanian As you can see, the main fault of the Something about this filmblocksout any su
philanthropist(abeavily accented TunCurry, movie is that it's wildly, insanely disorga- pension of disbelief. Maybe it has to do wit
who can't seem to decide whetherbe's avil- nized.Thespecial-effects-laden scenes seem Harrison Ford's sarcastic smirk being r
lain or a comic relief), a Congo native to exist to prop up and somewhat justify the placed by the do-good blandness of Dyla
(strangely played by Emie Hudson as a hus- effectsthemselves.'That's probably how Ed Walsh.
thing funklterintheheartofAfiica),andanex- Wood went through piles of stock footage: I wish I could say that at leastthe sped,
CIA agent (Laura Linnet) who now works we've ent anatomicblast.a giantoctonus and effects make the film watchable But all t

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matte paintings and computer graphics are jokes. But one or two awkward wisecrac
surprinsinglyeasy tospot,andStanWinston's aside, "Congo" is even self-impora
beasties are evidently extras from"Gorillasin enough to wind up with a quasi-moral
theMist." animals, like people, can be inheren
Lastly, I could use the ultimate good or bad. The good deserve to
postmodemist-age defense and say that it's warded. As for the bad ... As Linney's ch
all ajoke and we just don't get it-the film acter snarls, whipping out alaser gun, "p
conceived as a comment on the state of the them on the endangered-species list."
genre. Well,I still nurture an old-fashioned is not evolution of the genre. It's anu
notion that a parody is supposed to have sightly mutation.

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Hum
proves nice
guys can
rock too
By Heather Phares
Daily Arts Editor
What happens when a band that's
toiled for years on the bar circuit fi-
nally starts to see commercial success?
Ask Jeff Dimpsey, bassist for the Illi-
nois-based band Hum, and you'll get a
typically regular-guy answer: "People
are starting to come to the shows,
where before we only used to get like
five people in the audience when we
toured out of town," Dimpsey said
with more than a little surprise in his
voice. "I guess that's what's supposed
to happen, but for us it's kind of
crazy."
It's this down-to-earth attitude that
makes Hum (and their third album,
"You'd Prefer an Astronaut") different
than the maddening crowd of angst-
ridden rockers. Dimpsey's beginnings
as a musician are equally simple. "As
soon as I graduated from high school I
bought myself a guitar and taught my-
self how to play. I formed a band and
started playing at parties and just kept
at it. And somehow it turned into this,
with hardly any effort on my part," he

Hum are just a bunch of nice guys ampl
said with a laugh. "When I was in high
school Ilistened to alot of Homestead
and SST bands like the Minutemen, the
Replacements and Husker Du. I'd see
those guys play, there'd be like 50
people there, and I thought it was re-
ally cool. It seemed a lot more personal
than going to a huge show. So I just
decided to do it myself, got my friends
together in a band and had a good time.
Promised everyone a lot of beer if
they'd come to our shows, and it
worked out," Dimpsey added.
Like most things about the band,
Hum's origins are straightforward.
"Matt (Talbot, the group's singer and
guitarist) and Bryan (St. Pere, Hum's
drummer) formed the band about six

ifled to rock.
years ago," Dimpsey said. "They r
corded their first album without n
and Tim (Lash, the group's other gi
tarist). Then one of the guitarists a
the bassist left to form another band,
we joined about three and a half 0
ago. We recorded our second albu
with Brad Wood, and that got pick
up by Cargo Records. We just ke
touring and now it's turned into thi:
he said enthusiastically.
"This" includes some exciti
plans for the future of this Midweste
band. Dimpsey laid bare Hum's itinf
ary: "We're gonna tour with the Ver
for a while, then we've g
Lollapallooza second stage datr
Austin, Phoenix and L.A. That
be pretty cool. I'm pretty much a sm
club kind of guy so it'll be interesti
to be a part of a big rock event."
But it's Hum's rehearsal routi
thatexemplifies what the band's abc
According to Dimpsey, "We practi
in a basement and jam together, a
see if we can makea song out of it. N
just pretty much throw ideas at es
other, we don't have a si
songwriter type of guy. I like wo
this way because everyone's really i
their parts and they hang together w
It's a real band."

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