One of everybody's least-favorite scenes (including mine) in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the one where Shia LaBeouf finds his inner ape and starts swinging from vine to vine with all of monkey world behind him. It was about two Bigfoot steps out of the world Lucas and Spielberg had established and it misfired. This didn't kill the movie for me and it was over before it really began, but still...

It isn't so much the monkeys swinging from trees that bothers me. It can't be. That's what monkeys do. They eat poop (Editor's Note: NOT fact checked) and swing all day. So goes the life of a monkey. I just don't buy Shia's sudden Greystoke technique is all. Now some have argued that the entire scene is preposterous; that there is no way the monkeys could have caught up to the Jeeps that were zipping through the jungle (if you've seen the movie, and most of you have, you know the scene I'm referring to. It's the scene most likely to have made your eyes bleed). This, I say, is poppycock!

Do I believe monkeys can outrun a jeep flying through the jungle?

ABSOLUTELY.

First of all, we must remember these are movie monkeys. Movie monkeys have a history of amazing feats. Remember the monkeys from Project X? Long after NASA sent monkeys into space, Matthew Broderick was teaching them how to break the sound barrier. Those little bastards flew jets. How's about Amy from Congo? She knew sign language! And she talked! I know, I know. She was technically an ape. But monkey enough I say. Lancelot Link was a world-class spy. Cheetah was a stronger sidekick than Robin could ever have imagined. Do not hate on the monkey.

Let us also consider the fact that these are CGI monkeys. Now if these were real monkeys, maybe, maybe I could see your argument. But CGI monkeys are even better equipped to kick a Jeep's ass on the racetrack than normal ones could. They are designed to be quicker than Jeeps. Essentially, they are cartoons and it's hard to beat the Road Runner even if you're driving something fierce. The Road Runner goes 0-200mph in the span of a millisecond and that's an old model. Just imagine what a Lucas-engineered monkey is capable of producing (and yes, I'm seriously going here). Also, these were more like Outbreak-looking monkeys. They're used to producing great feats (like wiping out the human race).

Now there are a few other X-factors here when determining whether or not it is indeed possible for these monkeys to have caught up with the jungle Jeeps. The first and most obvious one being whether or not the road the Jeeps traveled was scenic and circular. If so -- and it certainly calculates that way -- this would have given Shia and his band of monkey-swinging friends a huge advantage, geography-wise. They just take the route of the radius and catch up with the humanoids, no problem.

Now another key here is vine availability. There seemed to be an abnormally high growth in this jungle. Without the vine, Shia and the monkey clan would be reduced to climbing and jumping from trees. This would not have cut it. No sir.

The final element to consider is the likelihood that the monkeys would be down for something like this. It's a fair question to ask. But I look at it like this: monkeys have a lot of time on their hands. It's easy to get bored in the jungle. They don't have TV or the World Wide Web or TMZ. If they have an opportunity to break the day's mold, they're going to have at it and they aren't going to pussyfoot about it either. They're going all-out with full monkey pride -- sometimes to the brink of obscenity.

So, in relation to the question of whether or not the monkeys can outrun Jeeps ... the defense rests.

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Dre writes three times a week for Film.com. Email him!

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