MAKING MISCHIEF HOW 'CURIOUS GEORGE' MADE THE JOURNEY FROM BOOK TO SCREEN.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

It's taken more than a decade and a half for Hollywood to figure out how to put ``Curious George'' - the cute but troublesome monkey star of the 65-year-old children's book franchise - up on movie screens.

The approach was to keep it simple.

Which should not be confused with making it simplistic.

``Although we run the risk of skewing a little young, that's who the books are for, the young children,'' explains the movie's director, Matthew O'Callaghan. ``We weren't going to try to slip stuff in to get the 12- and 14-year-old crowd; it just wasn't going to happen. Everybody knew the tone of the books, and we were going to stay true to that.

``However, I did want to create a story that didn't bore adults. As we all know, you don't just drop your 6-year-old off at the theater and go, 'See ya, I'm going shopping.' You're gonna sit in there with them. That's why we wanted to create a story that's simple enough for kids to follow, but maybe just a little bit more rich or deeper so the parents watching it can be entertained. There are verbal jokes and relationship stuff; I liked to sort of spread it out a little bit. But the intent was not to throw in off-color jokes just to hit this or that market.''

In print since German Jewish emigres Hans Augusto Reyersbach (nom de plume H.A. Rey) and his wife, Margret, published the first ``Curious George'' in 1941, the books have sold more than 30 million copies and been translated into 17 languages. Each tells a brightly illustrated tale of the young monkey's inquisitiveness getting him into some kind of mess in the big city. At the end of each book, his owner-mentor, known only as the Man With the Yellow Hat, helps George out of each scrape.

The movie, which opens Friday, involves a longer narrative. The MWTYH now has a name and a job (he's museum curator Ted, voiced by Will Ferrell), and the plot involves Ted's discovering George and bringing him back to New York from Africa. The film and its soundtrack album are also filled with new songs by hot singer-songwriter Jack Johnson, many of which convey the mute monkey's thoughts and feelings.

But perhaps the most crucial decision was how to visualize the film. The movie rights have moved among several studios, numerous filmmakers and various presentational formats over the years. The approach Universal Pictures and Ron Howard's Imagine production company finally settled on was old-fashioned hand-drawn animation, which all agreed approximated the primary- colored drawings Rey made for his books.

Of course, in an age when digital animation has supplanted the pen-and-ink process at the box office, this was a leap of faith. ``I really take my hat off to Universal and to Ron Howard's company for ultimately backing the decision to go with traditional animation when it's obvious that everybody is going computer-generated,'' says O'Callaghan, who, ironically, directed the first CG Mickey Mouse picture, ``Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas,'' for Disney. ``That was pretty brave on their behalf, but I think the source material sort of dictated which direction to go. Everybody knows the books, they've been around for 65 years, and you just have an impression when you open them up that they're colorful, they're simple, they're clean, and they look like drawings. We wanted to be theatrical, but make it look like the books.''

``When you look at the artwork, the gestures of George really speak to children,'' observes Louise Borden, herself a children's book writer and author of the recently published, illustrated history ``The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey.'' ``There's a gentleness, and there's a language that kids understand in those books. And I think the movie captures that.''

So does the soundtrack. When the filmmakers realized that they would need more than the average cartoon feature's collection of jingles and anthems to ease audiences inside the monkey's head, one of the most popular recording acts of recent years came to mind.

``Probably one of the reasons they approached me is that my songs are pretty clean to begin with,'' says Johnson, a professional surfer turned troubadour. ``It's something that's never been forced. I started playing guitar on the front porch in Hawaii with my family all around. We'd have these barbecues and everyone would come over. I'd learn these Cat Stevens and Jimmy Buffett and Beatles songs from my dad's friends, then I'd lead sing-alongs. So, every time I start writing a song, I always put myself on the front porch and think about my nieces and nephews and my mom being there. So, when I write, it comes from this place of writing for my family and writing for families, really.''

Indeed, Johnson read ``Curious George'' books as a tot and reads them to his own 2-year-old son. While recording the songs for the movie, he also made sure that the wee perspective was consulted.

``We had a lot of kids in the studio while we were recording to make sure they were digging it, that we weren't just making a record for adults,'' Johnson reveals. ``I used to be just a fan. Now I sort of am Curious George. When I was writing the songs, I had to get in that frame of mind because it was all first-person. It all had to come from, sort of, his spirit. The music was his spirit, and the words were his thoughts.''

The filmmakers also needed to constantly remind themselves where their project was coming from.

``The biggest challenge was that the star of the movie doesn't talk,'' director O'Callaghan confirms. ``It's very easy when you're storyboarding or writing the movie to give all the great lines to Ted or another character. You build up great scenes with them, and then you go, 'Wait a minute - what's this story about? It isn't about these guys, it's about George, so let's give more business to George.' So we were constantly double-checking that.''

According to Reys expert Borden, the filmmakers have succeeded in translating both the basic appeal and the particular delights of the ``Curious George'' books to the screen.

``I think he's remained a popular character for all these years because the young see that imitation and that curiosity in their own lives,'' Borden says of the innocent little guy.

``And the creators of this movie have tried to take parts of various books and make echoes of them in a new story. I think children are going to recognize George holding onto the balloons or the traffic jam that he creates, the cityscapes, getting into trouble with all the paint pots and painting zoo animals.''

Now, if only our little darlings will accept traditional animation as easily as they do those half-century-old book drawings.

``As wonderful and beautiful and fantastic as computer animation is, it's just another tool, and everything doesn't have to be done that way,'' O'Callaghan says. ``We'll see how the public responds, but I hope that this paves the way a little bit for other studios to do traditional animation.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) CURIOUSER and CURIOUSER

Everyone's favorite monkey, `Curious George,' swings into theaters

(2) no caption (Man With the Yellow Hat, Ted, holding curious George)

(3) MATTHEW O'CALLAGHAN director