One of the better animal comedies of recent years, this one centres on the exploits of an adorable Capuchin monkey, which has a line in party tricks unmatched since Cheta the Chimp in the old Tarzan films. Harvey Keitel makes a predictably extravagant bad guy as the gypsy hustler who acts as the catalyst for the story when the monkey he has trained to lift the wallets and jewels of people on a beach's boardwalk escapes its hated master. It ends up with Thora Birch, whose parents had forbidden her to have a pet because they felt she wasn't mature enough to look after it. Suddenly the nine-year-old is cleaning up her room, getting on with her parents and even being kind to her brother, while the monkey, a real charmer named Finster, improves its own lifestyle. Keitel wants the beast back, there's a hilarious chase scene and the monkey even ends up in a kite hovering over the beach. Only occasionally uninvolving, the story's a certain winner with schoolgirls.

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