awful special F/X...

Only the monkeys were bad but not enough to ruin this great film.

This was made in the mid-90s, and it was pretty realistic for the times. I know now it looks bad, but back then, it was pretty danged cutting-edge for its time. If they didn't use CGI, they would have been forced to use puppets and real animals, (I think they did use puppets for some scenes, like with the giant crocs, the giant flowers, the giant spiders, and the lion), but otherwise, some of those scenes would have been impossible without computer graphics imaging.

I don't think they were aiming for realism, everything had an exaggerated cartoon look on purpose, including the hunter. I thought the mixed cgi/real effects were well handled particularly the elephant walking over the car.