Disney’s been imposing human stories on live-action animals forever, but rarely has a narrator been so attuned to her subjects’ innate physical comedy as Tina Fey. Here, she chronicles the journey of macaque Maya, a resourceful single mom at the bottom of the social heap. The Sri Lanka-set “Monkey Kingdom” follows Maya and her tribe as they hang out at their temple-ruins home base, hunt for food, clash with rivals and venture into civilization.

Fey observes with Liz-Lemon-like relish as the monkeys raid a human kitchen — devouring everything from flour to a birthday cake — and brings a welcome dash of humor to their interactions with fellow jungle dwellers like a mongoose, a sloth bear and the macaques’ cousins, the langurs (“not the sharpest tools in the shed”). But other than cutesy names and a vague plot, the film generally steers clear of excessive anthropomorphizing. And who’s to say the once-a-year flight of a million delicious termites is not, in fact, “all the holidays rolled into one” for the monkey set?

Directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill (“Chimpanzee”) occasionally have trouble distinguishing the macaques — Maya’s bowl-cut look helps her stand out, but a turf battle descends into generic monkey scrapping. And I would have thought wildlife-minded Disney might have jettisoned a shot of beleaguered elephants wearing lighted headdresses in a local parade.

On the whole, though, you couldn’t do much better than “Monkey Kingdom” to get kids invested in learning about, and protecting, the natural world.