These Are the Days of Lasers in the Jungle...

According to a study from the INFORMS journal Management Science, the more golf a CEO plays, the less money they bring in that year. Still, it’s promoted as the “ultimate business tool”, and 90 per cent of Fortune 500 CEOs are avid golfers. Blogs from sites like “Entrepreneur” and online magazines like Forbes tout the networking virtues of the so-called sport, and any boomer above a certain tax bracket will spout some bullshit about the firmness of your opponent’s handshake. 

Sure, there are stories. Pam Am’s Juan Trippe and Bill Allen of Boeing used to strike deals on the course because they enjoyed the privacy it provided. That was a long time ago. In the digital age, one imagines it’s a lot more difficult to give a presentation on the fairway.
Golf culture was certainly a trope of the 90s. The first half of the decade saw the rise of IBM, Cisco and Microsoft along with one of the most sustained periods of economic growth in U.S. history, and all three of those companies’ CEOs could easily be found on links. Even Steve Jobs claimed to have briefly taken it up in the decade before moving onto something more absurd. Golf was always at the forefront of business and celebrity; it seemed even blacks could play. In 1990, the Professional Golfer’s Association began to distance itself from clubs that excluded on the basis of colour. Two years later, OJ Simpson would charm his way into the Arcola Country Club of Paramus, New Jersey. By 1997, Tiger Woods would win the Masters. 

The promise of pocket technology was first realized with PDAs. Satellite television had arrived and the internet was in its infancy. It all arrived, to use a phrase popular at business presentations, in the palm of your hand (provided you had really bulky hands). Films like The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity, Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 all featured plots about the dangers of such tech, but they also showcased what they believed was the very best it had to offer - to varying results. Even today, the careful application of CGI and practical work in Jurassic Park is breathtaking. The Lawnmower Man, on the other hand, is hysterical. 

After the first Gulf War, oil prices dropped by a third and crusty George H.W. Bush was replaced with a happy, sexy sax-playing Democrat - thanks, in part, to Rock the Vote. Shows like VH1’s I Love The 90s aired nearly as soon as the decade was over, featuring talking heads like MC Hammer, Jerry Springer and Kato Kaelin - after 9/11, we wanted nothing more than to Retvrn.

In Congo, R.B. Travis (Joe Don Baker) perpetually comes from the golf course. The CEO of Travicom trolleys around in his little golf cart from the green to the boardroom, tossing a blazer over his rumpled Polo shirt on the way. Whatever laid-back demeanour he may have had on the course is long gone by the time he gets to the office; he’s shouting at underlings, screaming into Telecom links. Travicom got a line on a rare, blue diamond that may revolutionize satellite communications, though it’s never quite explained how. When two employees (hi, Bruce Campbell!) go missing in the Congo, he sends a salvage - but not rescue - team. Travis is a 90s multi-millionaire, and he’s not necessarily intended to have a real-world counterpart, but it’s hard not to think of Steve Jobs today. Both seem prone to private screaming tantrums while discussing publicly their new revolutionary inventions - work that was farmed out to better, stronger minds. But Travis is played by Joe Don Baker. He’s Steve Jobs by way of the Texas Oilman on The Simpsons with a splash of Jimmy Buffett. 

The Jimmy Buffett link is far from an accident. Buffett plays the 727 pilot in Congo and was a close, personal friend of director Frank Marshall. He also wrote a theme song, “Don’t Bug Me”, for Marshall’s first film Arachnophobia and later cameos in the Marshall-produced Jurassic World as “Running Park Visitor with Margarita Drinks”. According to Golfweek, Jimmy Buffett loved golf as much as he loved the beach and margaritas and died a billionaire at 76 after launching a successful chain of hotels and casinos. His lyrics may have promoted a more hedonistic lifestyle, but never let it be forgotten that Jimmy Buffett was a shrewd businessman. 

Congo is the most Jimmy Buffett movie of all time - fusing corporate culture with the spirit of old adventure films and devil-may-care Indiana Jones cosplay with little regard for global conflict or racial politics. Within its decade, Congo is also its own #Retvrn film, one of a series of failed attempts to recapture old movie-making magic (a lineage it shares with Charles Shyer’s I Love Trouble).  Marshall’s direction may lack some of the globetrotting ease of old travelogues, but it's serviceable and competent - like Buffet - and not that different from the journeymen who shot the films on which it's riffing. It's only as good as the script. Part Jurassic Park, part King Kong, part King Solomon's Mines, all handled with the same flair of a hungover boomer at an Applebee’s.

He even includes a brief musical number, though it's The Mamas and the Papa's "California Dreamin'" and not the original songs written for Robert Stevenson and Geoffrey Barkas' Solomon's - it's an especially nice touch. 

To paraphrase something Buffett likely said, it’s not the destination, it’s the journey (“Searching is half the fun,” etc.).  The salvage operation quickly gets sidetracked into a convoluted expedition, with the fiance of one of the missing employees and ex-CIA op Karen Ross (Laura Linney), a Romanian philanthropist with ulterior motives ( an extremely over-the-top Tim Curry) and a dorky primatologist Peter Elliot (Dylan Walsh), his assistant (Grant Heslov, later George Clooney’s writing partner) and his gorilla Amy, trained in English sign language and equipped with a voice generator. Explorer and guide Monroe Kelly (Ernie Hudson) leads them through a conflict-torn Congo to what may well be the mythical Lost City of Zinj, near where the employees went missing and where a rumoured extinct race of grey gorillas roam the area. And damn if it isn’t weird, campy fun. Take an early presentation scene in which Elliot has to introduce his talking ape to investors. It’s a scene Spielberg likely would have cut or streamlined. Instead, Marshall uses it to allow character actors Stuart Pankin and Mary Ellen Trainor to provide some laugh-less banter about Mr. Ed. Or consider all of Tim Curry, whose wacky performance doesn’t conceal for a second his lust for money.

They say never mix business with politics, and Congo follows suit. The First Congo War was less than a year away when the film was released, but outside of a brief bit role from Joe Pantoliano as a shady trafficker, we’re not given much context. “The Kigani have had it with Zaire,” he says, “and they’re EATING people!” As far as Congo is concerned, the troubles of Africa in the 90s are just an excuse to shoot down their airplane later, pushing the plot forward and giving audiences a parachuting gorilla.  

Apart from a delightful cameo from Delroy Lindo, Congo’s secret weapon is Hudson. Sporting the same adventurer outfit as Richard Chamberlain in the 80s Allan Quatermain films, quipping with the same suavity and intonation as Errol Flynn, generally chewing scenery with a touch of an “I don’t have time for this shit” smirk.  More mercenary than treasure hunter, Hudson is bemused when he comes across a talking gorilla, but commanding whenever danger is afoot.  If they were seeking a black action adventurer to softly rectify the horrid racism of the 80s Quatermain films (or the novels a century before), they found him. How one of the most positive, charismatic black characters, portrayed by an actor long overdue,  isn’t an instant icon is a failure of the decade. Put him in a spinoff now - at 78, he’s more in shape than Harrison Ford. 

Congo only cost $13 million less than Jurassic Park, the film upon which it very much intended to capitalize, but that money must have gone entirely toward the latter’s effects budget. CGI was still too imperfect, so we’re dealing with guys in ape costumes, and some of the background players look straight out of a mid-tier Trog remake. Marshall, one of Spielberg’s longtime producers, relies on camp and bad jump scares with whip zooms whenever his ferocious beasts appear.  It’s more funny than scary, particularly in the climax when Ross repurposes the diamond into a laser. Because what was cooler in the 90s than satellite communication? For a generation that watched a smart bomb drop through a chimney on CNN: Weapons. The only character who cares about the diamond’s value is the sketchy Romanian, the minerals are infinitely more valuable in the hands of the defence department. An ex-spook wields a laser and eradicates the last of a species, and it’s rad and bonkers as hell. These were, after all, the days of miracle and wonder, and Congo employs all the gadgets throughout its runtime. 

What works best is the cast, a blend of knowing, winking professionals and fresh-faced ingenues giving it their most earnest. And at one point the ape drinks a martini. A margarita might have been a little too much.