By Geno McGahee
There is a rule in Hollywood. If you want to make a good movie, include an orangutan. It’s probably not a well-known rule, but I found it to be a rule that almost never fails. In 1996, DUNSTON CHECKS IN was released and it mixes some elements of HOME ALONE and an orangutan together into a relatively funny family comedy.
Robert Grant (Jason Alexander) lives in and runs a five star hotel with his two sons, Brian (Graham Sack) and Kyle (Eric Lloyd). As they operate the hotel, they get a visit from the boss, Mrs. Dubrow (Faye Dunaway), a total bitch. She walks in and starts immediately tearing down the hotel, but it’s Robert’s job to kiss her ass, which he does. At least she didn’t insult Grant’s bad rug. I don’t blame him for wearing one. His wife died and he has countless babes walking in and out of the hotel. Hell, there’s even an orangutan that visits…if he’s into that. I remember reading a story about a woman that lived romantically with a chimp. That was fucked up, but I just wanted to give you a base for my comment.
It is learned that one of the guests is a high level reviewer that determines just how many stars they’ll get. Dubrow wants to push it to a six star, but it could go down as well. It is determined that the eccentric Lord Rutledge (Rupert Everett) is the man and Robert and Dubrow starts sucking up to him, but he’s not what he seems and Kyle knows it. Kyle heard noises coming from the suitcase that Rutledge brought in and eventually comes face to face with its contents, an orangutan named Duston.
Duston works in criminal endeavors with Rutledge, scaling the building and jumping into windows and stealing jewelry from the other guests. When Duston starts misbehaving, he is reminded that Rutledge has killed his older brother, Samson. He apparently used a whip to kill Samson, I guess, because when he mentioned what happened to him, he was holding a whip thing. You have to be pretty demented to beat an orangutan with a whip until he dies and Rutledge fits the bill. He has one of those 1970’s porno mustaches that a lot of sexual deviants sport nowadays.
As Rutledge is getting his knob shined, another guest, Lionel Spalding (Glenn Shadix), is not getting good treatment at all. Much like the orangutan rule, there is another rule that Hollywood understands: fat guys getting beaten up is funny. I know that we are in this fat-shaming bullshit world, but if it’s a comedy and there’s a fat guy, he’d better be getting his ass handed to him or you’ll disappoint EVERYONE. DUNSTON CHECKS IN understood this and had a lot of fun with the Spalding character, including having woman after woman slap him for being a perv, even though they’re all misunderstandings caused by Dunston and he also falls down a lot and gets hurt a lot and Shadix does a great job overacting to make the comedy work the best.
Dunston escapes his evil master and Kyle hides him away, but his dad refuses to believe his orangutan story, until he sees him in the greenhouse as he’s dealing with two old chicks for some reason. They were only there to showcase Dunston.
Robert hires Buck (Paul Reubens), an animal trapper, to hunt down the orangutan and get him out of the hotel. He, of course, makes it much crazier. Buck is strange and has no tact as he tracks down the orangutan that he believes is at the hotel because somebody flushed it down the toilet and it ended up in the sewer system. This character fits perfectly into this film’s theme. Most every character is over the top and strange.
There is a big ball and everything is coming together in a big climax where it is learned that Spalding is the true big shot they were waiting for, that there is a loose orangutan and that Rutledge is a criminal. When Dubrow is told by Spalding that the hotel is now a 1 star place, she fires Robert immediately, but he doesn’t give a shit because he has his kids and an orangutan now.
Despite being fired, the owner of the company shows up and offers Robert a new and better position, noting how well he is doing and how impressed he is. Wait a minute. The hotel went from a 5 star to a 1 star on Robert’s watch and this old prick is impressed? What the hell is with that? That made no sense to me, but they needed a happy ending.
They move Robert to the tropics to manage a hotel there and they sent Spalding as well to make it up to him and if you thought you’d make it out of this film without another fat guy goes boom joke, you’d be wrong. Spalding is lying by the pool under a palm tree as Robert sucks up to him, but Dunston is on the top of the tree holding a huge coconut. He drops the monster coconut on the head of Spalding and kills him, I think. They really don’t tell you, but there is no way that he survived. I mean, I get that it’s funny to beat up the fat guy, but they pushed it too far here. I did not laugh when they killed off the fat guy, even if it was by orangutan.
DUNSTON CHECKS IN was OK. There were enough laughs to make it worth it and I love when people are mistaken for perverts and slapped for it. I know it’s a gag that’s used a lot but it doesn’t get old. The cast is good, Alexander’s rug is bad, and it’s hard to go wrong with an orangutan. I recommend it.
