GREYSTOKE: THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, LORD OF THE APES (1984) * First you think that it's difficult to tell which is more beautiful, the African jungle or the Scottish countryside. Then it goes on a bit, and you wonder whom a Frenchman would have more difficulty understanding speaking Portuguese, a Scotsman or an ape. Then you realize that it's not going to get any better, it will only play dull and stupid in equal part, and you vaguely recall that it's going to take something over two hours to get through it. If you're going to make a film in which a single actor is in the middle of virtually every scene, it behooves you to ensure that that character is properly cast. Christopher Lambert is not at all like Tarzan, but very much like a fishmonger who got his head stuck in a rat-infested black mop and is afraid to make an intelligible noise for fear that local gangsters will get him. Only Jim Carrey, and probably Val Kilmer, could do worse. Andie MacDowell is little better, the strength of her performance is her ability to speak softly, if that's all you're looking for in the female part in the countryside why not at least have her speak with a civilized English accent, or something exotic from the southern United States or Italy? Ralph Richardson is wonderful, and Ian Holm puts in a good performance too, but there's no hope. The locations are beautiful, if Lambert would quit sticking his head into the middle of the screen and making sounds like an exhausted and broken vacuum cleaner. Makes me want to have a dinner party with Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and on the other side of a one-way glass Keith Richards and Keith Moon with all of the accoutrements of stardom. What do you think of noble instinct now, my learned friends?