Brendan Fraser has a himbo problem. Not that he is one, mind you. But ever since he made his starring film debut in "Encino Man" as a hunky Neanderthal and then followed it up with a turn as a dim-bulb bassist in "Airheads," the theory has picked up quite a bit of speed.
Being thought of as, to quote Premiere magazine, "a prime specimen of male musculature," is enough to make Fraser come out swinging. The classically trained actor is, he insists, more than a sum of his pecs and abs.
If Fraser thought he was misunderstood before, wait until Hollywood gets a look at him in "George of the Jungle," the Disney comedy now unreeling in area theaters. Clad in a skimpy loincloth for most of the movie, Fraser plays a high-flying Tarzan-wannabe who's short on smarts but long on good looks.
"I will say George isn't the most complicated fellow," admits Fraser, a graduate of Seattle's prestigious Cornish College of the Arts. "He is king of the jungle and that ain't bad. I didn't think of him as a dunderhead but as a benign, benevolent, bumbling defender of the weak and protector of the innocent. And he also happens to be easy on the eyes."
Some actors are larger than life on screen. Brendan Fraser is larger than life in person. At 6 foot 2 with shoulders as broad as a quarterback's, he's an imposing figure. It's been a few months since he finished shooting "George of the Jungle," but he hasn't gotten the idiot monkey boy out of his system.
Ask Fraser if he's tired of the movie's theme song, and he grabs you by the shoulders and presses your head to his chest. "Come here and listen to my heart," he commands, humming the catchy theme music. "It's going BOOM-boom-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-boom-boom."
Faster than you can say, "Watch out for that tree!," Fraser releases you, a goofy grin on his face. The actor might have a higher IQ than George, but he possesses his alter-ego's willingness to clown on command.
The idea to bring George from the jungle to a bigger one, namely Hollywood, began only three years ago. An executive at Disney suggested to then Touchstone-Pictures president David Hoberman that there was a movie in Jay Ward's cartoon about the jungle dunce who has a habit of slamming into tree trunks.
"Securing the rights was remarkably easy," says Hoberman. "There were only 17 episodes of the show beginning in 1967, but everyone seems to remember George fondly. It's the song. We did a test study and even kids under 15 today know that song."
Getting the right tone for the film was a much more hairy proposition. For every 'toon-turned-movie-smash like "101 Dalmatians," there's a "Boris and Natasha," the 1992 feature based on Jay Ward's other famous series, "Rocky and Bullwinkle."
"Let's face it," says "George" director Sam Weisman. "A movie version of `George of the Jungle' could have been really stupid. That's why we decided to bring in Audrey Wells, the woman who wrote `The Truth about Cats and Dogs.' "
While the story is simple -- George falls in love with a beautiful heiress ("Cable Guy's" Leslie Mann) while trying to save his ape friend (voiced by John Cleese) from evil poachers --Wells and co-scripter Dana Olsen managed to give it an irreverent spin.
"Thank God Dana and Audrey got the joke," says Fraser. "They managed to infuse this spoof of all things Tarzan with subversive and socio-political humor and then disguise it as an entertainment for children."
The next challenge for Hoberman and company was casting a George whom both adults and kids could go ape over. Chris Farley was a contender. Then, Fraser turned up at a meeting with all 17 episodes of "George of the Jungle" memorized. After the actor let loose a spontaneous tribal scream, the part was his.
Filming took place last year primarily in Hawaii, which doubled as George's jungle home. Luckily for Fraser, the weather was mild. His entire wardrobe for the jungle scenes: four different loincloths.
"We ended up with loincloths in everything from suede to beautiful cotton," says Fraser, a native of Ottawa who grew up in Indianapolis, Detroit and Seattle. "At first, they just wanted him to wear one loincloth for the whole movie. I said, `He can't wear the same butt flap every day.' I knew George might live in the jungle, but he's not a pig."
As passionate as Fraser was about the costumes, he wasn't allowed to keep a single one as a souvenir. "Are you kidding?" he says. "They are on the way to Planet Hollywood right now. Just imagine, soon you'll be eating your burgers and looking up at Brendan Fraser's diapers."
"George of the Jungle," which co-stars Holland Taylor, Thomas Haden Church and Richard Roundtree, is one of Fraser's first movies in years that's expected to flex its muscles at the box office. Since "Encino Man" and "School Ties," the actor has made a habit out of being the best thing about bad movies. Case in point: "With Honors," "The Scout," "Airheads," "Younger and Younger," "The Passion of Darkly Noon" and "Mrs. Winterbourne."
