The Monkey's Uncle

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The Monkey's Uncle is a 1965 Walt Disney production starring Tommy Kirk as genius college student Merlin Jones and Annette Funicello as Jennifer, his girlfriend. Jones invents a man-powered airplane and a sleep-learning system. Funicello also sings the title song backed by The Beach Boys and written by the Sherman Brothers.

This was Tommy Kirk's last film for Walt Disney. It's a sequel to the 1964 film The Misadventures of Merlin Jones.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Storyline

A small college is told that a wealthy man (played by Arthur O'Connell) will give a large donation, but he has a strange request -- he challenges the school to build a man-powered flying machine. If they succeed by a certain date, they get the donation, otherwise it will go to a rival school.

Merlin Jones (Kirk) designs a lightweight airplane, powered by a propeller driven by bicycle pedals. Recognizing that even his football-jock friends won't be strong enough for such a feat, he develops a strength elixir (based on adrenaline), which should give the power that a man would need to get off the ground.

To get the jocks' support, he creates "an honest way to cheat," adapting the recently-discovered sleep-learning method to help them pass a particularly hard history course. Once the jocks are asleep, a timer starts a phonograph album, with the sound of Annette reading their lessons to them. This backfires in class, however -- asked to give an oral report, the jocks speak, but Annette's voice comes out! Eventually this all works out in the students' favor (of course).

Jones gets their help, and the great day comes. The pilot drinks the elixir, then pedals off into the sky, winning the contest. Unfortunately, the "wealthy donor" is last seen fleeing from men in white coats, who want to take him back to the local mental hospital.