TBS Oscar ‘Dinner’: Parody as Good as It Gets

You know the line about an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters eventually writing “Hamlet.” Well that may be, but a handful of chimps can give Hollywood’s best and brightest a run for their money.

“Dinner & a Monkey,” a half-hour TBS special spun off from its weekly “Dinner & a Movie” food ‘n’ flick series, features parodies--and often improvements--of the year’s top films in the form of an Academy Awards preview.

Between the “nominee clips,” hosts Paul Gilmartin and Annabelle Gurwitch engage in dry banter, perpetrate a few intentionally lame skits and prepare dishes punning on themes and images of the films (i.e., the phallic “Full Frontal Crudite Platter” for “The Full Monty”), as they do on their regular shows.

But it’s the monkeys who steal the show. OK, they had some human help from the folks at Palomar Pictures’ “Monkey-ed Movies,” who provided both the biting dialogue and the voices. But other than using their own voices, how does that make Homo sapien actors any better?

Acting aside, these are often the movies we wish we’d seen--even in the case of some good ones. In this “Boogie Nights,” when the primate Burt Reynolds explains that he makes adult movies with adult themes, Monkey Mark queries, “You mean like mortgage rates and back pain?” In this “As Good as It Gets,” the simian Jack Nicholson responds to the Helen Hunt character’s demand for a compliment by saying that her “head lice are quite tasty.”

And then there’s “Titanic,” which--though lacking the spectacles of effects--preserves all 90 seconds of actual story. “And then we all died,” says elderly Rose, wrapping the whole thing in a way that escaped James Cameron. Reminded that she survived, she replies, “Maybe it was something I saw in a movie.” If only.

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* “Dinner & a Monkey” airs on TBS today at 5:05 p.m., followed by a “Dinner & a Movie” double feature of “Edward Sissorhands” and “Back to the Future.” The network has rated it TV-PG-D (may not be suitable for young children, with an advisory for coarse dialogue).