7/10
A documentary about a chimp named Nim who, in the 70's, was given to a hippie-ish family to be raised as a human child (as much as possible, anyway) and taught sign language, as a kind of loose science experiment. The film focuses less on the scientific/sociological/anthropological questions and more on the actual tribulations Nim endured in his life as a result of human meddling. Indeed, the story has a built-in drama to it, and didn't really require any great leaps on the part of the filmmakers (the team behind Man on Wire) to bring it to the fore. I thought it was more a damning indictment of human naivety than anything else, and was kind of disappointed at how little scientific attention was given in the film to a chimp learning sign language - this is treated as more of a casual characteristic of Nim rather than the central thrust of the documentary. Judging from the glowing reviews, more people seemed to get swept up in Nim's life story than I did. Oh well.
One thing I really didn't like were the artistic "recreations" that cropped up during the film, probably to take away from the assumed monotony of constantly looking at talking heads and archival footage - when the voiceover of an interviewee is talking about Nim's mother being tranquilized so they could take Nim from her, don't show me a shadowy man in a shadowy room blurrily firing a tranquilizer gun into the camera lens - I'm not 5 years old, I can picture this traumatic event for myself thanks.
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