Robert Vince is one producer-director who doesn't mind a bit of monkeying around on his sets.

The stars of Vince's MVP family films are three chimps named Bernie, Louie and Jack.

In the first MVP movie, Most Valuable Primate, the chimps demonstrated their skills as hockey players.

In MVP 2 -- Most Vertical Primate -- now playing, the simian brothers graduate to skateboards though they are back on ice skates for some of this sequel.

Jack, as the chimp character is named in the films, is forced out of the Simian hockey team where he was the star player. Confused and hurt, Jack takes to the streets where he meets a homeless boy named Ben (Scott Goodman) who teaches him to skateboard.

"Bernie is the oldest of the chimps and he does most of the ice skating and skateboarding. His two younger brothers double for him in certain scenes," explains Vince.

"This is probably Bernie's last movie. He's reaching sexual maturity so he's becoming more interested in other things."

Vince is quick to point out that "there is no trick photography or computer-generated images in our films. The chimps do absolutely everything."

The human co-stars in MVP 2 include Home Improvement's Richard Karn, Beverly Hills alumnus Cameron Bancroft and Ray Galletti of DaVinci's Inquest.

Bernie's favourite human was Karn. In one scene, Bernie and Karn are having breakfast.

"Chimps almost never share their food especially with humans," says Vince. "They love to tease by offering food and pulling it away at the last moment. During one take, Bernie offered Richard one of his marshmallows.

"All the actors learned quickly to improvise with the chimps and Richard accepted the offering. Bernie's trainers were flabbergasted. It showed just how much Bernie loved working with Richard."

In addition to the MVP films, Vince created the Air Bud movies.

The first two were released to theatres but Air Bud 3 went directly to video.

"Disney felt the series wouldn't survive a third theatrical release, but Air Bud 3 did even better than the first two did on video, so now Disney is planning a theatrical release for Air Bud 4 which we finished earlier this year."

Air Bud 4 is set in the soccer world and is called Air Bud: World Pup. "We're so proud of our Air Bud movies. They're becoming the Lassie films of their generation. They just keep gaining in popularity. We've had 15 different dogs play Air Bud and are always in the process of training new ones."


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