Starring Tim Allen, Martin Short, Sam Huntington, JoBeth Williams and Lolita Davidovich Directed by John Pasquin Rated PG Running time 105 minutes We give this film a rating of 5 out of 10

(Mar. 6, 1997) -- Tim Allen brings his patented low-key charm and wise-guy humor to Jungle 2 Jungle, a Disney remake of a rather cluttered cross-cultural French comedy.

These adaptations have become something of a staple for Disney, from Three Men and a Baby days forward. The new one probably will serve Allen well. It's a lot fresher and, in many ways, more likable than The Santa Clause, a blockbuster that launched both Allen and director John Pasquin on the big screen. The two are reteamed in Jungle.

This time Allen plays a high-powered coffee-futures trader on the New York commodities exchange who travels to remote Venezuela to get a divorce from his long-estranged first wife. She's a physician who left New York City and Allen to take up residence with an Indian tribe there. On arrival, he finds that he's the father of a 13-year-old son who badly wants to come back with him to visit his "jungle" -- New York City.

The bonding between father and son comes hard, but you know the saga's satisfyingly sentimental -- if improbable -- outcome from the start. Meanwhile, the cross-cultural comedy proceeds apace. Unfortunately, much of it has an unpleasant edge. Mimi-Siku, the boy's tribal name, translates to "cat urine." His favorite dish is lizard guts.

The first time Allen calls his long-lost son by name, Mimi-Siku comes out as Mitsubishi. Allen spends his first night in the Amazon jungle in a hammock among the tribe's similarly bedded, exceptionally flatulent bachelors. He awakens less than well rested and with a ready wisecrack about discovering a way "to make a killing in gas futures."

Call it U.S. jingoism or French xenophobia; most of these attempts at humor come from the original film (An Indian in the City) by Thierry Lhermitte, who serves as an associate producer of the Disney version. In any case, it's a brand of humor with real potential for offense even though the saga eventually confirms the values of the son's civilization over those of the father's.

When the action moves to New York, Jungle frequently strays from the developing father-son relationship to explore mounting tensions between the boy and his father's self-absorbed fiancee, and between the father and a group of Russian thugs with an interest in coffee futures. Most of that material feels like padding, although the menacing Russians inspire the picture's most elaborately choreographed and effective bit of farce.

Jungle is best when it sticks to father and son testing and retesting each other on the way to the kind of understanding that leads to love. A scene set in Central Park in which the boy urges Allen to join a group of freewheeling dancers works especially well. Like an earlier scene showing the father trying choreographically to fake out his son's pet spider, the dancing gives Allen some prime physical comedy. His execution is becomingly understated but agile.

The lion's share of the physical funny business, however, goes to Martin Short, who plays Allen's manic business partner and second banana. Short is continually in physical trouble here: smacking his face into a car window, hurtling into a locked door and so forth. Although convention requires that he always come up unscathed, his timing and mugging as well as some nifty editing give the gags a hard, realistic edge.

In addition to Allen and Short, the cast prominently includes Lolita Davidovich as Allen's vain bride-to-be, and JoBeth Williams as his sane wife. Sam Huntington, who makes his feature debut as Mimi-Siku, brings a lean, lithe body and an expressive face to the work, but overall his performance seems studied and overdirected.

No doubt Jungle 2 Jungle counts the chance to watch Tim Allen play Dancing With Spiders as its prime point of interest. His fans won't be disappointed.