Lyle Van de Groot is the main antagonist of George of the Jungle and the secondary antagonist of the sequel George of the Jungle 2. He was Ursula's devoted fiancé and a wealthy man who tried at all costs to marry her.
Appearances[]
George of the Jungle[]
In the movie, Lyle Van de Groot was Ursula Stanhope's fiancé who is guided into the Jungle of Africa by Max and Thor to find Ursula, who was with Mr. Kwame and three other guides, N'Dugo, Kip, and Baleto on a expedition. he finds and gives her a big kiss when he is reunited with her. When she asks him how he found her, he says that he hired Max and Thor who are the best guiders in the world.
Lyle tries to get in contact with someone to help him and Ursula get back home to San Francisco, California, but Ursula decides that she wants to stay to see if they could find the legendary White Ape, which Lyle agrees to.
Next morning they walked across a bridge and although Mr. Kwame told them all to be very careful because the bridge was not safe, Lyle then rocked it dangerously, claiming that he has been on similarly dangerous bridges in Maui which are "totally safe", resulting in N'Dugo falling off the bridge into the water below, severely injured which began the guides' hatred for him. Since then, throughout the trip he has become the huge butt of the jokes among the guides, due to their intense hatred of him over what he did to N'Dugo, as well as his unhealthy romantic obsession towards Ursula which gets on their nerves, and Lyle just making a fool out of himself in general, or all three of them at the same time.
That night at camp, Lyle tried to make it up to them, by giving them a cigar and taking pictures with his Polaroid camera, but they only find this funny and N'Dugo said in Swahili that he prefers the resolution of the light of Lyle's camera at 35 millimeter transparency and also that the lens was dirty, but he had the equipment to clean it for him before taking a shot of an astonished Lyle with his own flash camera.
The next day, Lyle and Ursula sneak into the jungle so they can find the white ape but they are attacked by a lion. Lyle attempts to make a break for it, but trips on a root and gets knocked unconscious, hence effectively abandoning Ursula to face the ferocious lion alone. Ursula is rescued by the white ape who is really a man raised by apes: George of the Jungle.
When Lyle wakes up from being knocked out he finds Ursula's scrunchie. He later finds the group and asks them to help him find Ursula, which they do but they never find her.
Later Lyle tried to make peace with the guides again with a Swahili phrase book, but ended up saying "Pardon me girls", "I know you're feeling pretty hey sailor up here about now", "But if you would just let me order a bowl of fried clams" and "We can all have smallpox tomorrow morning." The guides laughed out loud at his stupidity, and Max said that he will offer fifty zamoles a man to capture the white ape alive, N'Dugo agreed in English asking for a hundred zamoles, much to Lyle and Mr. Kwame's astonishment and they continued the search.
The next day Lyle and the group are out searching again when Lyle trips over the branch and falls face-first into some elephant dung which N'Dugo comments about it and guides laugh, and hears Ursula and takes Max and Thor with him. He finds Ursula and tries to reunite with her but she refuses to accept him back because of him abandoning her and not trying to save her when the lion attacked them. Then George appears and Lyle accidentally shoots him. George survives and Lyle, Max, and Thor are taken to the Bujumbura Jail where Max and Thor get out but Lyle has to stay because he is convicted for shooting George. From that point on, this case of events officially cements Ursula's blatant refusal to marry Lyle despite her mother's insistence.
Later on, Lyle escapes the jail and becomes a mail-order minister and returns to the jungle where he finds Ursula with George and kidnaps Ursula to take her to Bujumbura and forcefully marry her against her will. George tries to stop Lyle but Lyle's henchmen capture George, and Lyle manages to escape with Ursula. When they reach the river, Lyle and Ursula slip into the water but swim to the boat that is waiting to take them to Bujumbura. As Lyle rows the boat he proposes to Ursula but before Ursula can turn him down, they notice big waters but luckily, unknown to Lyle, George has escaped the Mercenaries and is nearby to rescue Ursula. When Lyle rowed the boat safely into a nearby cave, he still thinks Ursula is in the boat with him and orders her to say "I do" to which someone replies "I do". When Lyle ignited his lighter to see his bride, he discovers to his horror that he has accidentally married a female ape and is kissed by her as the boat continues downstream.
George of the Jungle 2[]
Lyle is first seen in his bedroom, talking to Beatrice, Ursula's mother, on the phone. The narrator then refreshes the audience's memory by showing the scene of when Lyle fell into some elephant dung in the jungle, which annoys him. Believing Ape owned the deed to Ape Mountain, he cheated him in a poker game. Upon discovering that Ape doesn't own the deed, but George does, Lyle instead makes Ape work off his debts from the gambling for the next 17 years.
After stealing the deed from George's hotel room, Lyle later appears at the circus, convincing Ursula that he was not responsible for his actions in the first film, even getting his doctor to explain it. But once the doctor mentioned that Lyle knew where Ursula was, Lyle fired him. He attempted to make Ursula love him again, but George ruined it by singing his own theme song. Lyle then hires a hypnotist to make it seem like Ursula married him, and it worked. He mocks George at a farm, only to be dragged away by a horse that does not like him.
Lyle sends two agents, Sally and Kowalski, out to destroy the jungle in order to build his anticipated Zoo. He also calls the police on George, Ape, and Rocky. The police were about to shoot Ape, but George saves him. They stop on the Empire State Building, and Lyle quickly gets himself sent (in a package) to the jungle. He attempts to kidnap a knocked-out Ursula, who wakes up and chooses Lyle over George. At the last second, George grabs Ursula away, hangs Lyle up in a tree branch, and kisses Ursula, restoring her full memory of him. Lyle escapes, repeats his threats on George's life, and insults the narrator, calling him annoying. In response, the narrator grabs Lyle by his underwear and drags him away into the sky, removing him from the story.
Trivia[]
- Lyle did not originate from the original George of the Jungle cartoon. However, he does bear some slight similarities to two existing villains from the show; Seymour Noodnik, a rich tycoon who used his wealth to outsmart George, and Jerry Mander, an evil housing developer who tried to kick George and his family out of the jungle. Lyle's scheme in the sequel is very similar to Mander's.
- Lyle is similar to Gaston. Both are handsome men whom are very narcissistic, desire to marry the heroines against their will (Ursula, Belle), fall into filth, have incompetent comic relief henchmen (Max and Thor, LeFou), and their enemies are animalistic heroes who live differently than them due to certain circumstances (George being raised in the jungle and Beast being held under a spell in an enchanted castle).
- Thomas Haden Church has cited Lyle as one of his favorite film roles, being the only major cast member (besides John Cleese) who agreed to come back for the direct-to-video sequel. One notable mention was on the audio commentary for Spider-Man 3 where he joked about the role during the police identification scene by stating, "It turns out, this man was your uncle's killer. He was also in George of the Jungle." Co-star Topher Grace praised him for the part.
- Lyle's role of being Ursula's fiancée resembled Clayton's original novel counterpart, while being the antagonist resembled Clayton's Disney portrayal two years later. Unlike the novel version of Clayton, Lyle is never George's cousin.
- In the blooper reel of George of the Jungle 2, Lyle's underwear rips while the narrator is carrying him away, causing him to fall from the sky out of the narrator's hand.
Gallery[]
George of the Jungle[]
.jpg "599 (Ursula Stanhope).jpg (682 KB)")
George of the Jungle 2[]
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