El Cosmico here, presenting Femme Firesky's review of MONKEYBONE! You know, from reading this, I think I'd rather see a film with Chris Kattan's Mr. Peepers character, and, of course, the world clearly needs a MANGO film...Oh, to be Mango. Well, while we're waiting for that stuff...here's Firesky:
My boyfriend and I just got back from the Bay Area screening of Monkeybone, and I really had to write to tell you what we thought. Overall, the concept, the effects, and the acting (especially the cameos!) were great, but the editing and pace were so off that the movie could end up a complete mess.
The first sign of trouble was the age of the average audience member. I’m 22, but felt old compared to more than half of the audience. Most were kids between 13 and 17. Also, most were girls, and the testers were aggressively soliciting their opinions. A tester gave the two teenage girls sitting next to us $10 each for their reviews of the film. (We were ignored.)
I have a feeling Fox may market this as a wacky, romantic comedy, rather than a dark, surreal comic fantasy. When I was approached on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley for the screening, the tester excitedly asked me if I’d like to see the new Brendan Fraser movie. My boyfriend had read about Monkeybone on your site so of course I said yes, but she made it sound like another Encino Man or Blast From the Past.
We both had high expectations for the movie, considering Henry Selick was the director, and especially after seeing AICN’s screen shots. We both extremely enjoyed the first half, but the second half was typical Jim Carrey-type slapstick. Chris Kattan rescued the last 20 or so minutes, but he wasn’t enough to make up for the ridiculousness of the second hour. It seemed that the producers at first let Selick make the weird, trippy movie he wanted, but then decided that they had to make a movie for everyone, especially the readers of Tiger Beat.
Here comes the spoiler:
The plot is fantastical; it’s original, yet it references similar movies like Cool World and Beetlejuice. Fraser plays a comic strip artist, Stu Miley, whose signature potty-mouthed character, a monkey named Monkeybone, has just gotten his own TV show. Before he has time to enjoy his success, he gets in an accident and goes into a coma. His girlfriend, Bridget Fonda, a sleep researcher, vows to stay by his side until he wakes up, but his annoying, evil sister wants to pull the plug. They finally agree to give Stu three months to wake up.
Meanwhile, in Stu’s head (or is it?) he goes to a bizarre limbo world where his alter ego, Monkeybone, is his real, live, rude cartoon monkey pal. The freakish inhabitants of this world are able to watch what we are dreaming in the real world; this is their main form of entertainment. To get back to his real life, Stu battles evil creatures and even Death herself (oddly casted with "Hollywood Squares"’ Whoopi Goldberg). Monkeybone thwarts his plan, and ends up in Stu’s body in the real world, while Stu himself is helplessly trapped in the underworld. Hilarity ensues (yeah, right) as Monkeybone gets used to his human body. He does wacky things like eat with his hands, obsess about sex, and swing from the rafters. He plans to use a nightmare serum, which Bridget Fonda has developed, to give the world nightmares. They will serve as amusement for the limbo world where Stu is trapped. These scenes go on way too long, and we were squirming in our seats. Finally, Stu is able to inhabit a corpse (played by Chris Kattan, who was amazingly hilarious) to go back to the real world and rescue the world from Monkeybone’s dastardly plans.
The main problem with the script was that there were so many raunchy penis jokes (and there were tons), sex jokes, and fart jokes, that it would have trouble getting a PG-13. It was really explicit. But the physical humor was so stupid that it was obviously aimed towards the under-15 crowd. Also, the fantasy and nightmare sequences were so incredibly disturbing (reminiscent of The Wall) that the majority of America’s teens would probably be put off. I’m sure that there are lots of kids out there who would like this, but Fox probably knows it’s not mainstream enough to be a huge teen hit. Hopefully they’ll cut the juvenile crap and focus on the more adult aspects of the story.
We’ll wait to see the final cut before we enthusiastically recommend the movie to our friends. It’s definitely worth a matinee ticket though, for the effects and the surrealism of the story. Not all the effects were completed, but from what we saw, they were well done, trippy, and twisted.
Keep it real,
Firesky
