Born to Be Wild

14-year-old Rick Heller is a juvenile delinquent who keeps getting into trouble. Rick's single mother, Margaret, is a behavioral scientist at University of California, Berkeley, and she is studying interspecies communication between humans and gorillas, using sign language. After Rick goes on a joyride in his mother's van, she punishes him by putting him to work cleaning the cage of a female western lowland gorilla named Katie. Rick and Katie gradually form a close friendship, and he realizes that she is much more intelligent than the average gorilla.