To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Blistering performances.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Nim was raised as a human, breast fed, given clothing, a human family, a house, bed and toys. In this loving environment he naturally developed a facility for language, was toilet trained, learning dozens of sign language words, and the ability to make sentences. He formed lasting friendships with some student teachers that tried throughout their lives, with the limited power they had, to protect him. Once grown, as part of a natural adolescence that included a period of danger to his teachers as he learned his own strength and looked for a mate, he was relegated to dirty cages, and had a near escape from the animal laboratories of nightmares in which conscious live chimps are immobilized in painful brain experiments. The emotional brutality shown towards Nim, particularly by Columbia Professor Hubert Terrace, is breathtaking. Terrace's propensity to sleep with Nim's female caretakers and act out rather strange family dynamics - first with a former lover who just married someone else, and later with the "next hot new thing" - could keep Freud busy for a long time. The most human character in the movie- loving, caring, expressive, communicative, and playful - was, ironically, Nim. I'm ashamed to be part of a culture that treated such a precious soul to such cruelty over so many years. The twisted power structures that enabled men like Terrace to use Nim as a tool to seek fame, and discard him without a thought like his student amours, rankle to the core. Late in his life, Nim kept trying to escape his cold cage to the house on the property - where he still felt he belonged. One wonders what Jane Goodall would think of our brutality towards Nim. I will never forget the interview in which his loving caretaker brought him to the brutal cages where he was met with a cattle prod by yet another heartless professor. I would like to put the cattle prod right back on him. Nim, on behalf of all feeling human beings, I'm sorry.

To me, as a linguist, the ill-conceived professional designs of Columbia University professor Herbert Terrace kept getting more and more diabolical as the film progressed...and no one stopped him!As a humanist, I was appalled at Professor Terrace's misguided views of mankind; his on-going affairs with his female students; and his continuous disavowals of any responsibility of any part of anything at all ...except for publicity, of course.And, as a resident of NYC, I am astonished at the fact that he still teaches his outmoded doctrine of animal-behavioral studies ideas (based on the long-refuted BF Skinner) at Columbia University--(and, BTW, is rated by his students in the same manner as I am writing about him here).My helplessness to do anything about Nim has been echoed by other reviewers–so I won't cry any more literary tears for that poor animal--except to thank Bob Ingersoll for his dedication and caring spirit.Anyone who has read Kune knows that scholars ought not to keep beating one scientific approach for their whole lives (e.g. Skinner), but to see their discipline through as many approaches as will move that discipline along. Alas, Terrance appears to be the worst kind of professor, who viewed his discipline though only one poor lens, and did so with no one monitoring him.And, after viewing this film, I'm even more glad now that I chose to get my Linguistics Ph.D. at NYU and not Columbia, so many years ago.)The film itself was nearly perfect. It operated with less fuss than most and just tried to allow the story to shine though.

PROJECT NIM 6 out of 10 This the the story of Nim , a chimpanzee who was taken away from his mother at birth and as part of an experiment , put with a human family to see how would act with learning to sign and living without his own kind. The problem is that the incompetent people in charge of the project cared nothing of Nim and therefore his life was ultimately a really bad one.Herbert Terrace , the head of the project , comes out of this really badly. Not only was he pervert who slept with the young girls who worked with him ( god knows what they saw in him) he also didn't care what happened to Nim. A nasty little man that should be ashamed of himself.The documentary has lots of archive footage of Nim and the many people who worked with him but it still did not have the affect on me that it obviously did on others. Perhaps it's because i didn't really feel for the ape. It bit too many people to feel much sympathy with him.This documentary is described on the poster as Great , Powerful and breathtaking .Sadly, It was none of these.

The movie works really good with the new Planet of the Apes (or the Planet of the Apes movie series). It'd be a great double bill. Despite (or due to?) the fact that it is a documentary, there are quite a few similarities here, that you might find eerie. Apart from that this is a human story... sorry I mean an Ape story of course!The story that unfolds, is very engaging and might leave you with strong feelings. That is if you have a heart for animals. Though I guess if you can't stand them, than those are strong feelings too. But then you shouldn't watch it. Stay with the discovery channel or something like that. This one tells a story that is as intriguing as a feature film. I went through a few emotions until the end ... And was left with mixed feelings ... which is a good thing!