Melbourne comedy festival review by Steve Bennett

In Police Squad and Naked Gun, Leslie Nielsen maintained a dignified deadpan amid preposterous plots, cheesy gags and movie parodies. Chimp Cop Nights deploys the same broad, silly comedy – except that everyone involved is aware of how ridiculous their premise is, forever mugging and metaphorically winking to the audience

‘For this whole thing I’m a chimp,’ sighs Timothy Clark wearily as he explains to those who didn’t see last year’s Chimp Cop the premise of a character whose chimpanzeeness is never a factor.

This time around the hardbitten officer is paired up with rookie Rachel Rosethorn (Rosie Vernel) as they battle a billionaire criminal through the mean streets  of the mid-1980s, taking in lavish parties, daring heists and heavily signposted plot points.

Their sense of era is brilliantly realised in the grainy VHS inserts, especially the lovingly crafted sub-007 opening titles. Action movie and cop show cliches abound, of course, while there are some neat twists on comedic ones, as stereotypical set-ups are immediately undermined.

Chimp Cop himself is a wonderful comedy moron, offering plenty of ‘dumb and dumber’ gags, while the script contains puns galore and plenty of inventive touches, not all of them meta-commentaries on the action. A favourite is the private eye’s client who can only speak, and indeed understand, Mickey Spillane-style film noir dialogue – one of several exaggerated comic caricatures played by the perpetually scene-stealing Adam Knox.  Ben Vernel completes the quartet as the evil Max Green, among many others.

The production is so delightfully zero budget that when they need a prop Bible, that ever-so-hard-to-find book, they just grab another title and stick a hand-drawn cover on to it. And Mission Impossible’s most famous scene is literally given a new angle to make it easier to execute.

Chimp Cop Nights is not sophisticated – no shit! – and some of the gags are just TOO cheesy to work, even though you might think that impossible in such an over-the-top parody. But this exuberant hour is an invigorating blast of knockabout silliness that fires out joyous gags like a confetti cannon. 

Review date: 14 Apr 2016
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett