YMMV / Mighty Joe Young

• Awesome Music: The 1998 remake features not only an amazing score from James Horner, but also includes beautiful African chanting.
• Complete Monster (1998 remake): Andrei Strasser is a poacher who establishes his ruthlessness by killing the titular ape's mother as well as mortally wounding Dr. Ruth Young. Twelve years later, Andrei runs a supposed wildlife preserve wherein he sells organs of the animals he's harnessed over the black market. When he recognizes Joe as the ape that bit his fingers off years prior, Andrei — intent on selling the primate's body parts for a profit — goads Jill Young, Ruth's daughter, into giving him Joe, claiming he would be safe at his refuge. Strasser demonstrates his indifference towards the lives of others when a missed shot intended for Jill causes a deadly fire to spread throughout the carnival, endangering a child trapped in a Ferris wheel. Believing that he won, Strasser gloats whilst preparing to finish what he started with Jill's mother by murdering her. Valuing monetary gain above all else, Strasser exemplifies everything wrong with illegal hunting.
• Cult Classic: Both the 1949 and 1998 films didn't do good at the box office, but have gone on to be well adored on television and home video airings. Many regard it as the best giant ape movies after King Kong, to the point many consider them unofficial King Kong movies. James Rolfe refused to include it in his best "Kong Knock-Offs" list because he was adamant they'd win by a country mile.
• Crazy Is Cool: Max O'Hara, to promote a new night club, goes to Africa — tells sensational stories about his "adventures" there, and brings along cowboys to help him capture animals for his club! Why cowboys? "To lasso lions of course!"
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The film was shot in Hawaii and stars Naveen Andrews. It was filmed in the same area of Hawaii that Andrews would return to six years later for Lost.
• I Am Not Shazam: "Mighty" is not part of the name of the eponymous gorilla. In the first film, he goes by "Joe Young" or "Mr. Joseph Young". In the second film, everyone calls him "Joe", with no last name — although in one scene Harry Ruben introduces him as "Mighty Joe", and sounds like he's about to say "Young" but is cut short by Joe crashing through the wall. Although the reserve Joe is moved to at the end is called the "Joe Young Wildlife Park".
• Moral Event Horizon: Andrei Strasser crossed irredeemable territory when he murdered Joe and Jill's mothers. Even more so when he tried to murder Jill because she knew his true identity, which even leads his assistant Garth to turn against him.
  • From the original 1949 film, the one drunkard who actually burned Joe's hand as he was begging for more booze.
• Special Effects Failure: While the effects in the original overall are quite impressive, a few of the scenes where Joe interacts with real objects have some problems even the film's age can't excuse. The video letter at the end, in particular, has a moment where Jill tosses Joe a banana and you can clearly see the real banana fly right over Joe's head and out of the frame as Joe "catches" the stop-motion one.
• Spiritual Successor: Not related in terms of plot to King Kong (1933), but inspired by it, featuring a similar premise — a giant ape from an exotic jungle gets brought to civilization as a tourist attraction — and the same creative team: director Ernest B. Schoedsack, producer Merian C. Cooper, screenwriter Ruth Rose, special effects artist Willis O'Brien, and star Robert Armstrong.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The original's FX, which were the first work of Ray Harryhausen, still hold up even in the age of CGI, which is amazing. The remake's use of practical animatronics and suitmation, created by SFX legend Rick Baker (who also created the ape suits in King Kong (1976), Gorillas in the Mist and Harry and the Hendersons, among others), also look quite good and very realistic even to this day. The few shots created with CGI (courtesy of Dream Quest Images and Industrial Light & Magic) also work quite well, especially considering how difficult it was to animate fur back in 1998.