Why the low rating?

I dunno, I love this movie

Very true- this is a fun movie- sure the Hippos attacking the boats is a lame - but i really like the way Laura Linney pulled off the karen ross character and how she made Travis pay. Tho Ernie Hudson had some of the best lines as monroe-

and it does have some great quotes - from the porters chiming in and singing California Dreaming - Bad Gorilla - Where did you go? I ran! - Every monkey for 200 miles thinks they're Elvis - STOP eating my sesame cakes - and my fav is the one i use as my tag...

"Whoa! A talking gorilla...I can feel the money hands on the back of my neck going woo, woo, woo!" Joe Pantoliano Congo

I'm surprised the rating is this high. Myself and three others walked out of the theatre. It was just too dumb for us to tolerate. I could see kids enjoying it, and I'm sure there's some nostalgia for those who were young enough at the time.

This movie is unbelievably bad. God awful writing from plot to dialog. Cheesy acting from Americans pretending to be everyone else on Earth. We can only laugh and some of you comfort yourselves thinking they were this bad on purpose. They weren't in on the joke. The film was terrible and was meant to be serious.

Here's a few low points off the top of my head:

Guy presents advanced technology applied to gorillas. This could mean years of research and progress into human-animal understanding. Five minutes later he's going to the Congo, because...something. (the actual explanation is so dumb it's not worth writing, but I'm sure you'd complain so here: He just now figures out on the exact same day he's given this demonstration that Amy isn't happy and that he must now immediately go back to the Congo).

He half-assedly cooks up this excuse that Amy will teach other gorillas sign language. What this has to do with the hand to speech technology is literally nothing. Thesis? Any biological reason an animal would even bother learning Amy's language? Let's think about it and compare this idiotic idea with humans, since gorillas are as smart as people in this film. 1 guy speaks Portuguese, he decides to go live with some Chinese people in China. He speaks Mandarin fluently as well. How long until the Chinese people are speaking Portuguese? NEVER. Oh and does he bring a team of researchers with him? No. Does he even tag Amy or in any way make it possible for him to come back and see how his "theory" has played out? No.

Now you have Tim Curry, I can get past that he sees a tame gorilla in Berkeley California that once painted a generic eye and thus he concludes the gorilla lived in the lost city of Nodd or wherever, but I can't get past that the very day Tim Curry goes to see this gorilla, that's been in captivity for many years, the trainer just happens to have randomly decided he must immediately fly back to the Congo, despite there being a revolution taking place, and a volcano errupting the same day they find it, and some woman who just happens to be going to the exact same place. Man and gorilla, random Romanian, random CIA woman, random revolution, and random volcanic eruption the likes of which hadn't been seen for 3,000+ years, all at once in the same f-ing place. Riiiiiiiiiggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhtttt........

They jump out of the airplane over the jungle immediately after being shot at, not worried much that you'll be hunted down by those same soldiers? Also, why are they wasting so many heat seeking missiles on what is clearly a low grade charter plane? Do they really have that many millions of dollars to throw away shooting at tourists? Or are there so few airplanes in that country they can go hog wild? Either way that's perhaps the stupidest and most incompetent military ever portrayed in cinematic history. Reference back to the airport where Winston carjacks a soldier for his truck while entirely surrounded by other soldiers who that soldier would have immediately notified.

Then we meet the military leader who won't let the legally passing through people go until they bribe him the right amount. But you know, he's otherwise an honorable man, or just so dumb he doesn't realize it's one woman he already has captive who is bribing him, he could just rifle butt her to the head and take all her money and send them back to America.

So after jumping out of the airplane and setting up camp in a jungle nation with the 11th largest territory on Earth, the lone survivor of the evil gorillas just happens to be a stone's throw away from their random landing point. It makes you wonder, where would they have gone had the plane not been shot down? They knew where they were going didn't have a landing strip.

I don't even want to get into how stupid it is that the first group to go in set up camp literally 20 feet from an ancient wall and they didn't figure it out immediately. The second group was the same way. It's like the scenery was too obviously a studio set so they probably had cognitive dissonance about the obviously unnatural contour of nature making a perfect vertical wall.

Oh and magical diamond lasers? Really? Sh!t turned into Star Wars at the end when she pushed a couple buttons and shot down a satellite in space. Though it was almost necessary since the film portrayed the killer gorillas who'd been left alone for 3,000 years as perfectly capable of challenging a laser defense system with remote automatic machine guns, and when shot at, all bullets are shunted to their shoulders and no amount of ammunition brings them down.

Because this movie just sucks. Against All Odds, the movie is just horrible. Imagine a Michael Crichton story, Steven Spielberg production company, Jerry Goldsmith score, and a really great cast, this movie underachieves at an Olympic level.