Nate Gibson could use a hand. Two of them, in fact.
When he was just 18, Nate contracted a form of bacterial meningitis that left him a paraplegic. He can’t walk, or sit, or even turn over in bed by himself. It’s taken years of physical therapy for him to even manipulate his fingers—and then, just barely.
The disease took pretty much everything from Nate, and it shows no signs of giving much back. Before the disease hit, he was just weeks away from college, with a whole world of possibility beyond that. Now, his world is his wheelchair. His future: decades of dependency.
So, yeah, Nate could use a hand, along with a few other limbs, too.
And Gigi? She has a few to loan.
Gigi is a capuchin monkey, and she hasn’t had the easiest of lives, either. She was found in a cut-rate petting zoo, though no-one wanted to pet the angry little primate. The owners tossed her Cheerios and chilly glances until Carolyn Alibon, head of a service animal charity, came to whisk her away.
For the next few years, Gigi trained to become a service animal—someone specially conditioned to help paraplegics like Nate be just a bit more independent.
But Gigi’s a suspicious gal. And Nate’s home—filled as it is with strange sounds and smells and people and (ugh!) a dog—doesn’t strike her as the most homey environment. At least, not at first.
But perhaps with time, Gigi might take a shine to Nate. Perhaps with patience, they’ll learn to live with each other. After all, Nate always seems to have some tasty peanut butter on his finger. And, well, the guy looks like he could use some help.
Gigi might be able to give him a hand. Two of them, in fact. And she might even throw in a tail, as well.
There’s a reason why Gigi gets first billing in this movie’s title: The monkey’s pretty much the star of the show, the pivot point on which all others revolve. And she proves to be a huge benefit to Nate.
But she was also trained to be helpful, so let’s give a hearty hurrah for those who trained her: Carolyn and her organization CEBUS (which, incidentally, is the genus name for the capuchin monkey). Carolyn rescued the animal. She and her crew trained Gigi. And, judging from the organization’s facilities, CEBUS has paired countless animal (including dogs and horses and whatnot) with human owners who needed a little extra help.
Anyone who’s had a service animal knows just how instrumental they can be—not just physically, but mentally and emotionally, too. And while using capuchin monkeys as service animals has become controversial (we’ll get into that, too), there’s no question that Nate and many others have been helped by such animals.
Nate proves to be a pretty good companion to Gigi, too. Despite the monkey’s reluctance to come out of her cage, Nate shows a great deal of patience and friendliness—allowing Gigi to warm up on her own timetable, not his.
Nate’s family has sacrificed a lot to take care of their son. That’s especially true of his mother, Claire, who carries the majority of Nate’s caregiving load. She wakes up at 3 a.m. to turn Nate over. She oversees Nate’s battery of specialists. Claire’s sacrificed a lot to care for her boy. And while she’ll acknowledge how hard it’s been, she never wavers.
Like pepper on an omelet, bits of faith are sprinkled throughout this film.
Most overtly, these elements show up in the Gibsons’ mealtime prayers. Nate’s story is essentially bracketed by two such petitions In the first, Nate’s grandmother prays (though she admits to God, “You might not remember me”); and in the second, his dad does (in a more traditional way).
When Nate gets critically sick and is driven to the hospital, Claire cradles his head in her arms. “Please, dear God,” she says over and over. “Please, dear God.”
And when Nate later gets whisked to a bigger (and apparently Catholic) hospital in Nashville, Claire and her husband, Dan, meet in a big waiting room, one that’s graced with a huge stained-glass window. Claire breaks down, and Dan holds her. “We’ll get through it,” he tells her. The camera’s view moves up and out, and it shows the couple underneath a massive, stylized cross. Cinematically, the story seemingly tells us that they’re not alone in this fight, that God is with them, too.
Evolution is mentioned. And there’s a lot of discussion about whether capuchins are too closely related to people to be ethically used as service animals. One animal-rights activist says that to make capuchins “subservient” to humankind is “not only unnatural, it’s immoral.” At one point, Nate snaps, “Who died and made them God?” But he also acknowledges the similarities between capuchins and humans. “She’s far more similar to us than we think.”
We see someone wear a necklace with a cross on it.
Before he gets sick, Nate invites a girl to spend Fourth of July at a nearby lake and with his family. They strip off their tops (the 17-year-old girl is in a red bra) and swim in the lake, flirting a bit. Later, after Nate’s sickness, they meet again. And despite Nate’s paralysis, they get rather physically chummy: She sits on his lap as they flirt and canoodle a bit.
Nate’s sister has a boyfriend, and we see the two of them kiss and hug. Women sometimes wear outfits that expose cleavage and midriff, and guys go shirtless. Someone makes a joke using a crude term for breasts. Nate is gratified to read some flattering and flirtatious comments on his Instagram posts.
Nate moves from his bed to wheelchair to shower by virtue of a motorized harness. A caregiver cleans him while in the shower, with a cloth covering his private parts. When she preps him for cleaning—unbuckling his pants—Nate jokes with a curious Gigi that the female caregiver “likes to undress me.”
Nate tries to kill himself by maneuvering his motorized wheelchair over to a koi pond (with its joystick) and raising the seat, which allows him to slip into the water. (The suicide attempt is obviously unsuccessful: His father pulls him from the water.)
We see Nate in the throes of sickness, too. He suffers a seizure in the hospital as his worried family looks on. Doctors soberly tell Dan and Claire that Nate’s chances of survival are slim.
Animal rights protestors surround the Gibson home, throwing fake blood and sometimes banging on cars. (At one point, Claire tells someone she’d like to punch the group’s leader “right in her Botoxed face.”)
Nate is in pain much of the time, we’re told, but never more so than when he undergoes physical therapy to regain some use of his hands. He yells and sometimes cries from the pain.
We hear four uses of the s-word, and the show flirts with the f-word, too—using a variety of euphemisms like “freaking” as substitutes. We also hear “a–” once” and “h—” several times. An obscene gesture is flashed. God’s name is misused about nine times, and Jesus’ name seems to be abused once.
The movie makes a bit of a joke of “Mama Blanche,” Nate’s grandmother. At a picnic, one of Nate’s siblings jokes that she’ll skip an outing to “day drink” with Grandma. The same sibling is entrusted with Nate’s care for a few hours while their parents go out for a rare night on the town; she jokingly asks Gigi where the vodka’s hidden. Gigi might not know, but Mama Blanche finds it anyway: She falls asleep with a bottle of vodka at her side.
This alcohol-induced nap allows Nate to sneak out of the house and attend a wild college party. That house is filled with people carrying Solo cups, and one attendee insists that Nate take an alcoholic shot. It’s far from the only drink Nate has that evening; he clearly gets drunk, and Gigi tastes some alcohol, too. We see revelers play drinking games.
People drink wine and beer elsewhere, too. Travis (boyfriend of Nate’s sister, Katy) buys a case of beer with a fake ID, and he may smoke marijuana out on the lake. (We see smoke curl from an out-of-view cigarette/joint, at least, after Travis takes a puff.) A pre-meningitis Nate flirts with a girl, who’s manning a firecracker stand. She quits the job to go with Nate to the lake, explaining she was just covering for her hung-over sister. (She adds that she’s always hung over.)
When Nate’s taken to the hospital, doctors want to do a urine screen. “My boy is not on drugs!” Claire tells them. Claire jokingly introduces Gigi to Dan. “This is father,” she says. “He likes beer.”
When Nate’s sister, Kate, first meets Gigi, she breaks protocol and storms toward the monkey’s cage. Gigi throws feces in Kate’s face, which a giggling Claire tries to wipe off.
When Nate gets sick, his sister finds him curled up in a bathroom, retching into the toilet.
Once he’s wheelchair-bound, he answers a series of presumed (though technically unasked) questions. Included in those: “No, I can’t go to the bathroom (by myself).” There’s a reference to someone’s sheets being disgusting.
Gigi & Nate present a pretty glowing portrait of how capuchin monkeys make great companions and service animals. But the practice is controversial, and an animal rights activist contends that monkeys sometimes attack their owners.
Capuchin monkeys are considered to be the New World’s most intelligent primate. From their days serving alongside organ grinders, humans have found them friendly, adaptable and easy to train.
But while there’s no organ grinder here, the movie itself does have an axe to grind.
Gigi & Nate is, in some ways, an advocacy film—and as such, it can feel at times a bit preachy. Not in its spiritual content (though it has a touch of that, too), but in wanting its audience to take home a strong, unmistakable message: Capuchin monkeys make great service animals! it tells us. Those who say otherwise are the movie’s equally unmistakable villains here. That can leave the film feeling just a wee bit clunky at times.
The story includes more content than you’d expect, too. The language was surprisingly harsh in spots. It embraced a certain cavalier attitude toward the use and abuse of alcohol. Gigi & Nate feels like it could’ve nailed down a PG rating (had its makers wanted to) with just a touch more restraint. It seems as though it’s aiming for a Dolphin Tale-like vibe—an animal-centric story that’s fun for the whole family. Those niggling and unnecessary content issues may push it out of consideration for some.
But none of those negatives should obscure Gigi & Nate’s well-meaning core and sweet story—one, we’re told, that’s based on a true one. The film introduces us to a man and a monkey who kinda need each other. It walks us through their symbiotic relationship, and it encourages us to root for both of them and their ongoing friendship.
In today’s movie environment, rarely do descriptions like “sweet” and “inspirational” crop up. But Gigi & Nate manages to be both—even if it also comes with a few monkey wrenches.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
