Top ten movie monkeys

“Never work with animals or children,” reads the old showbiz saying, one that Hollywood funnyman Ben Stiller clearly hasn’t been paying attention to as he tackles both once again in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Not that his onscreen son Nick (played by Desperate Housewives’ Jake Cherry) gives him much trouble as his character Larry works as a night guard at a museum. Oh no, it’s the animals that prove a nuisance, particularly the capuchin monkey, Dexter, who not content with causing chaos at the Museum of Natural History in the 2006 original is back for more, this time relocated to the Smithsonian Institution.

It’s a scene-stealing turn from the capuchin monkey (or rather monkeys as two were used during production), but Dexter isn’t alone as a headline-grabbing Hollywood hairball. Rather he joins the long list of prominent primates to sink their little claws into the film biz. So to celebrate Dexter’s monkey business, we’re running down ten of cinema’s finest furry friends, keeping matters strictly monkey minus the apes (gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, etc.) so no asking where King Kong is. He doesn’t count!