REVIEWED - CURIOUS GEORGE IF WE can judge him by the company he keeps, then Curious George, the happy creation of children's writers Margret and HA Rey, must be a decent, liberal sort of monkey. The songs for his first big-screen release are composed by that drab, ecologically concerned surf- busker, Jack Johnson. Such upstanding folk as Drew Barrymore and Joan Plowright turn up to do voice work. And the whole enterprise - a distinctly pleasing one - is suffused with warm, cheery good humour, writes Donald Clarke

It is, therefore, disturbing to relate that the script offers implicit support for the plundering of ancient relics by western archaeologists. Matthew O'Callaghan's incendiary film finds the Man in the Yellow Hat (Will Ferrell) travelling to Africa in search of a massive idol that will, he hopes, revitalise the fortunes of his floundering museum in New York.

What would Mr Johnson, whose bestselling soundtrack album urges under-eights to "reduce, reuse and recycle", make of this? What is his opinion of the film-makers' apparent conclusion that product placement is acceptable if it's for a banana firm or for a certain German car manufacturer whose camper vans often transport hippies? We should be told.

Oh well. Very young children should, despite these troubling anomalies, get along quite nicely with Curious George. The animation, though technically unsophisticated, is fluid and colourful. The voices are all top-notch. And the script, unlike that for this week's nasty The Wild (see review, below), never overreaches itself.

Make sure, however, to explain the evils of cultural imperialism to the little ones afterwards.