Following Orders isn't the only Way to become a Hero... Reckless young US air force pilot Jimmy Garrett (Matthew Broderick) is grounded for gross misconduct, and reassigned to the Experimental Pilot Performance Project at the hush-hush Lockridge base. Put to work training chimps to fly aircraft simulators, Garrett rapidly establishes a rapport with Virgil, an educated ape dumped on the Project when funding for University language-training was withdrawn. Aided by Garrett, the chimp speedily becomes the Project's "top gun". But his success contains the potential seeds of his own destruction. For so good dose Virgil get at apeing what a human pilot dose that he's "graduated" to the secrecy-shrounded second stage of experimentation. That's the submission of chimps to lethal pulsed-radiation bursts, similar to those that a proper pilot would suffer in the proximity of a nuclear blast. When discovers to what his training commitment has condemned the chimp, an aghast Garrett, aided by Teri (Helen Hunt), Virgil's original language
teacher, pulls out all the stops to secure the ape's escape. Ultimately, though, the chimp finds its own high-flying freedom.
Release:
April 17, 1987
Studio:
Fox
Genre:
Sci-Fi
Rating:
PG
Running Time:
107 minutes
Writer:
Stanley Weiser and Lawrence Lasker
Producer:
Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker
Director:
Jonathan Kaplan
Cast:
Matthew Broderick..... Jimmy Garrett Helen Hunt..... Teri Willie..... Virgil Bill Sadler..... Dr. Carroll Johnny Ray McGhee..... Robertson Jonathan Stark..... Sgt. Krieger
