Monkey Trouble

A trained capuchin monkey works as a pickpocket for Azro, a small-time con man who performs with the animal on the streets and takes what it steals from passers-by. After Azro's wife leaves him and he turns on the monkey in a drunken rage, the animal runs away and ends up in the home of nine-year-old Eva, a girl who has been feeling pushed aside since the arrival of a new baby in the family. She hides the fugitive and names him Dodger, unaware at first that he has been taught to steal. Azro, meanwhile, has taken money from criminals for a much bigger job and needs his partner back.

Franco Amurri directed the film, his second feature after Flashback (1990), and wrote the screenplay with Stu Krieger. Thora Birch plays Eva, with Harvey Keitel as Azro, Mimi Rogers and Christopher McDonald as her parents, and the monkey Finster as Dodger. The supporting cast runs to dozens of credited parts. The production was a British and American co-production from Scott Free Productions and New Line Cinema, released in March 1994.

Worldwide, the film took in about 16 million dollars. On IMDb it holds a rating of 5.3 from roughly 7,700 votes, and on TMDB 5.7 from a much smaller pool of 222 votes. A critics' rating of 5.8 from 12 reviews sits a little above the larger audience sample, so the film drew a mildly mixed response rather than a warm one, with the widest audience the least impressed.