The Monkey's Uncle is a 1965 Walt Disney production starring Tommy Kirk as genius college student Merlin Jones and Annette Funicello as his girlfriend, Jennifer. The title plays on the idiom "monkey's uncle" and refers to a chimpanzee named Stanley, Merlin's legal "nephew" ; Stanley otherwise has little relevance to the plot. Jones invents a man-powered airplane and a sleep-learning system. The film is a sequel to the 1964 film The Misadventures of Merlin Jones.
Plot
The film starts in court, where Merlin Jones legally adopts his monkey, Stanley. Midvale College is told that a wealthy man, Mr. Astorbilt, will give a large donation, but he has a strange request—he challenges the school to build a man-powered flying machine. If they succeed by a certain date, they get the donation, otherwise it will go to a rival school. Jones designs a lightweight airplane, powered by a propeller driven by bicycle pedals. Recognizing that even his football-jock friends won't be strong enough for such a feat, he develops a strength elixir, which should give the power that a man would need to get off the ground. To get the jocks' support, he creates "an honest way to cheat", adapting the recently discovered sleep-learning method to help them pass a particularly hard history course. Once the jocks are asleep, a timer starts a phonograph player, with the sound of Merlin's girlfriend, Jennifer, reading their lessons to them. This backfires in class, however—asked to give an oral report, the jocks speak, but Jennifer's voice comes out. It eventually works out in the students' favor. Jones gets the jocks' help, and the great day comes. The pilot drinks the elixir, then pedals off into the sky, winning the contest. Unfortunately, the "wealthy donor" is last seen fleeing from men in white coats, who want to take him back to the local mental hospital.
The Misadventures of Merlin Jones had been a surprise hit, earning over $4 million in rentals for Disney and prompting a sequel. It was announced in March 1964. This production marks both Tommy Kirk's and Annette Funicello's last film for the studio. Mark Goddard, who plays Haywood, made his feature film debut in this movie. The screen credit for writing reads, "Screenplay by Tom and Helen August", which were the pseudonyms for Alfred Lewis Levitt and Helen Levitt, two writers who were blacklisted. The home video release of this film restored the Levitts' credits. Funicello performs the title track with the Beach Boys over the opening credits. "They were just beginning," Funicello recalled. "They were wonderful guys and I feel fortunate that I was kind of in on the ground floor. We even worked together performing at Disneyland. Little did any of us know how successful they would become!" Funicello did not know whose idea it was to bring in the Beach Boys but felt it was "a stroke of brilliance. As silly as the song is in places, it really does rock and with the Beach Boys' amazing four-part harmonies, I could sing it without echo." She regarded singing with the group as the highlight of her film career at Disney. Shortly after making the movie, Funicello married her agent. This would be the last film she made for Disney until Lots of Luck.
Richard F. Shepard of The New York Times described The Monkey's Uncle as "an amusing film made with artless artfulness... It all falls into bright, colorful and innocuous non sequitur and, in an hour and a half, you are through, mildly diverted and unburdened by message." Variety noted that the film, "like its predecessor, depends on gimmicks and some nutty situations, which provide mild amusement." Margaret Harford of the Los Angeles Times said the film "disappoints as a lineal descendant of Disney's Absent Minded Professor but it can hardly miss with the young set." The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the film was "perhaps slightly funnier for being less extravagant than its predecessor."
