Hey folks, Harry here with 2 reviews from the second (that I know of) test screening of MONKEYBONE. Now this is still way early as I've heard the movie won't be being released till right around March of 2001. Now, the first review from Icicle is a positive with problems. Meaning, he felt the movie had merit, but it still needed quite a bit of work. And then Burke out and out pans it calling it a bomb. Well, since I'm in the film... we all know it can't be a bomb. And because I'm in it, we all know that magical fairy dust will be sprinkled all about it to make it float and fly like it should... ahem... Seriously though, the film has some problems it seems. The main complaint from Icicle is that the middle section in the mystical DarkTown felt incredibly brief... Now, this is just sad, because originally the middle section was the dominate section. I know of one major sequence involving Death's lair and what happens with the dead in the afterlife that was BRILLIANT, but Fox was unwilling to spend the money to make it come to life... alas now an audience member complains about how that section needed something.... wow, imagine that. It is my firm belief (though possibly misguided) that this film was never meant for the mainstream. That this film was set to be a bizarre schizophrenic jewel for the strange and unusual folks that share the surface of the planet with quite a few mundanes. Now I could be dead wrong. The film could simply not work. But Henry has nearly half a year to get this thing right, and having just watched my dvds of the new NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS disc and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH... I have faith and hope in Henry. And besides... I'm in the film. That means it has to be great. Now if only they hadn't cut out my love scene with Bridget Fonda from the script... I suggest we do that scene. It'll get cheers from the audience, or at the very least gasps of horror and disgust. Ahem... Here's Icicle...
Hello Harry,
Icicle here with a report from the test screening of Monkeybone. There will be some minor spoilers as I give my impressions and suggesstions (the studio execs didn't feel my opinion was necessary, so I guess I need to voice them here).
Monkeybone is a Brendan Fraiser comedy/drama which I'm sure you're already familiar with since I saw your little scene in it! And as a side note, if you're going to be in movies, you at least need a little bit more of a part. Any movie that has a halfway clever use for Stephen King in it needs more for you than spraying Chris Kattan with a garden hose. I mean, with no buildup and you just standing there with a blank stare as Chris does his thing, it was tremendously dissapointing. Get a better agent!
The plotline of Monkeybone is Brendan Fraiser stars as a cartoonist on the verge of a perfect life. His cartoon, Monkeybone, is the first thing we see in the movie. A kind of Ren and Stimpy style cartoon, it's filled with some over the top gross humor and a couple insights into our hero's head. The name should be clue enough for what jokes there acutally were.
Not only is Monkeybone the cartoon being picked up by a network, Fraiser finds himself in the midst of lucrative marketing deals (managed by a Kids in the Hall veteran, y'know, the NewsRadio guy) and on the verge of proposing to the always lovely Bridget Fonda. Mr. Fraiser, despite his obvious shyness and reluctance with all this newfound fame, is determined to make the best of it, to find and keep some happiness.
I can feel a Zen hallmark card coming on now...
But since this is a comedy, something has to go wrong. So, through a series of events, our hapless cartoonist finds himself in a coma, trapped in the world of dreams, presided over by the Lord of Nightmares. Fraiser's older sister (played by the rich bitch on Will and Grace, essentialy playing the same here) "doesn't want him to suffer." So, in three months, the plug gets pulled. Does Fraiser escape his coma world in time? Will he be reunited with the woman he loves? Does Whoopi Goldberg turn in a performance worth watching? Do you care by now?
But, believe it or not, there are some good laughs and one or two genuine plot twists in this movie. And while I get the feeling that the trailer will spoil the best of them, I won't do the movie such a disservice as to spoil one of the very few things that raises the level of the movie a touch over mediocre. I may be cruel, but not that cruel.
The bad first....
First off, they needed to slow down a bit in the beginning. Fraiser gets acclimated to his stay in comaworld (or whatever it's called) waaaaaay too fast. I wanted to see some of the sights, the insanity that could only be a collection of a bunch of people in comas. Instead, I get the whrilwind tour with someone who's already seen the sights one too many times.
Some other things that I will mention that I think could be vastly improved is that they need to close up a couple of very large plot holes. A couple of them are at the end of the movie (where most of the holes are, no matter which movie you see). One glaring gaff is that there was a large amount of something dangerous that the public gets a hold of. The villan uses it as a distraction, but no mention of it after that. What happened to all the monkeys with their thumb up their bum?
Another one at the end, is that why do doctors who witness one medical miracle not bat an eyelash, but then witness the same miracle later and freak out so much that I'm surprised they didn't have yellow stains on their surgery gowns?
Oh, and one more thing, Ms. Fonda was horribly underused throughout this picture. Her expertise as a sleep disorder doctor provided some much needed weight and some real insight into how dreaming and nightmares work. Or, at least it would have. As it stands now, there are only hints at what her role could have been. She did provide some contrast and science to the dreaming world (again, I won't spoil how), but I wanted so much more.
Now, the good....
Rose McGowan in Isis cat gear and make up, the waitress for the bar in the comaworld. She helps Fraiser adjust to life in comaland and with some other stuff (no spoiler agian, sorry). She plays a nice girl for a change, and does a good job with a smaller part (and provides some welcome eye-candy).
And while I overheard people around me claiming the whole dream world was a giant rip-off of Beetlejuice, I actually found it to have some truly original stuff in it. Definetely Beetlejuice's child, but it's own just the same. It was a mix of animation, claymation, puffy Power Rangeresque costumes and some other weird stuff. Any movie with the balls to at least try that gets bonus points in my book.
Some of the jokes work, and work well. I caught myself laughing at more than one place. Brendan Fraiser gets to try out his Jim Carrey impersanation, and does it decently. Chris Kattan has a couple moments that were funny (despite what you may think of him).
The whole package is okay. I guess, as it stands now, it could be a good date movie. Maybe a rental. With a couple plot holes tightened up and some more work done one the effects, though, Monkeybone could be worth some real dollars. It's got the potential to avoid being called "The Next Cool World." Okay, so it's already better than that.
Time to go, and to think, I wrote all that without one bone joke. I must be getting old.
Icicle
Alright.... well the next review has a massive amount of spoilers, but decrees that MONKEYBONE will be a gigantic BOMB! Burke's main issue comes from feeling that the character of MONKEYBONE himself, is a terrible character of no interest. He equates it to asking you to imagine if you didn't like Roger Rabbit for the duration of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. Well... Like I said earlier... I've read the script and Monkeybone (the character) is never really funny. He's not really intended to be on the page anyways... When reading the script I found that I thought of the little animated fart as Chet from WEIRD SCIENCE... that asshole brother that ya can't shake. Emotionally retarded passive agressive type. Monkeybone is an unredeemable little bugger, like the bad genie in the bottle... not the good one. HOWEVER, if the movie doesn't play that way... then it could be mighty grating... we'll see. Here's Burke's review... WATCH OUT FOR SPOILERS....
Warning! Warning! A bomb is about to hit, and it’s called Monkeybone! Watch Brendan Fraser goof his way thru another lame comedy! See Bridget Fonda play another lifeless character! Laugh at Chris Kattan, the only funny person in the film, providing much needed life support! Groan at seeing Whoopi be death herself! Marvel at how the makers of Beetlejuice should sue for being so stylistically ripped off! Long for Roger Rabbit to appear and blow the lame Monkeybone monkey character away! Thank god that it’s been so many years between Cool World and this, and that it’ll be at least as many more years till the next crap film of this type is made!
Monkeybone is an unfunny, unoriginal, uninspired time waster. Wait, want more info? Okay then. The film had no credits, so it just jumped into a cartoon for the Monkeybone tv cartoon show. The quality of the animation in this cartoon makes The Family Guy look like last years Tarzan. The cartoon has one real joke, a boy getting wood from an infatuation over his ugly teacher with massive amounts of skin hanging from her arms. After the cartoon we meet Brendan and Bridget. Brendan is the creator/artist of the Monkeybone strip which is now adding a cartoon show. His friend wants to capitalize on the show and sell Monkeybone merchandise. But as usual in these types of films Brendan doesn’t want to sell out and earn all that money. You know, I bet that’s how the studio that financed this film feels. Forget making any money from the grosses or from selling tie-in products, we’re in this film for the art! Um, yeah….anyway. Brendan says no, says he’s going to propose to Bridget that evening, they try to leave and because of an inflatable Monkeybone toy thing put in the car they get in a crash. Brendan gets hurt and falls in a coma, though Bridget is fine.
We see Brendan on a roller coaster cart rolling down tracks eventually stopping at DownTown. DownTown appears to be an unused set from Beetlejuice. Brendan walks around and gets a good look at all the walking toys which you can buy at Toys’R’Us by the time of the films release. When he’s in a bar being served by a guy with a bull’s head designed by Picasso we see Monkeybone the character make his first real appearance in the film, and things really get bad.
In Rogger Rabbit, if Roger sucked as a character it would’ve dragged the whole film down. The film could never survive such a main character being lame. The same is true for Monkeybone. The character is in so much of the film and the "performance" is so important that if the character sucks it will really bring the film down anytime you see him on screen. Well, the character of Monkeybone sucks. Flat out f*cking lame. He isn’t funny, isn’t cute, isn’t cool, isn’t interesting. You want to bash his brains in after he’s been on screen for 2 seconds. The yellow alien thing in Lost in Space was more interesting. Yuck.
Back in the real world Brendan’s sister wants to pull the plug and kill him because they had agreed to never let the other suffer for long. After some quick talking Bridget gets the sister to agree to wait 3 months, after which the chances of recovery from a coma drop rapidly. God, the film is so boring I’m just going to skim thru the next stuff. Brendan wants to get back to the real world, works with Monkeybone to steal an Exit ticket from death (Whoopi) to get out of there, but Monkeybone knocks him unconscious and goes into Brendan’s body all alone, thereby having control over Brendan’s body. This happens after 3 months had gone by and they were seconds away from pulling the plug. Wow, it was so surprising they didn’t just off his character, wasn’t it? Oh boy, it was suspenseful.
Anyway, thankfully, from this moment on the film starts to actually achieve a little bit of life. Brendan seems to be back, and Bridget is happy. We get to a scene where Monkeybone is gonna get some action with Bridget that evening. I do not remember what song was playing, but it was fitting as we see Brendan swing around the bars on the bed frame and the film actually becomes funny for once. Actually, hilarious is what this scene was, with Bridget fearing Brendan’s insane antics and getting away from him as he tries to drop completely on her and instead meeting a painful result. The entire audience was dying from this scene. We can only wish the rest of the film were this funny.
We learn Monkeybone had an agreement with the God of Nightmares, the head guy of DownTown, to take over Brendan’s body so Monkeybone can cause people to have nightmares so they have new stuff to view in Downtown. Lame, convoluted, and doesn’t make sense when you think it thru too much. Anyway, Brendan finds out, escapes from a jail that The God of Nightmares had put him in. This with the help from Rose McGowan, a true pussy in this film, *rowr*. Uh, that’s pussycat with whiskers, not whatever dirty little thought you were thinking. So Brendan goes back to death and she’s pissed about what happened and sends Brendan back to earth in a new body.
Well, actually, it’s a dead body. One the doctors were in the middle of harvesting organs from. Chris Kattan’s body. And we get the second really hilarious part of the film. Watching him come to life and try to get out of there and run away, with a broken neck that causes his head to hang to the side constantly, while the doctors are chasing after him wanting his organs so they can make money from them was killer. Pure physical comedy and had people rolling in the aisle.
We eventually get Brendan in Kattan confronting Monkeybone in Brendan at a charity thing where Monkeybone was going to unleash toys with a nightmare chemical. The whole inducing nightmares with drugs, created by Bridget, is really too stupid to get into. So anyway, we get our face down and B/K chases after M/B and it ends with them hanging from different ropes on a Monkeybone giant balloon. We get to see organs flying out of Kattan’s body as they swing around, with the doctors on the ground trying to scoop them up. One gets run over by a lawnmower and sprays on the doctors’ outfits.
A cop shoots out the balloon, it falls, and both die and go back to downtown. Death catches them in a giant robot thing, squishes them together so both Brendan and Monkeybone are one, and then sends Brendan back up to life. He ends up with the girl, death gets her giant robot hands on the God of Nightmares, and the world is safe…..from bad pizza or something. Either way, the film finally ends, thank god.
The almost sex scene and Kattan as a walking corpse were hilarious bits and the film really needed more of that. Unfortunately it relies far too much on the character of Monkeybone who doesn’t say or do one funny thing in the entire film (cept’ as Brendan during the almost sex scene). And the rest of the film makes you think of Beetlejuice constantly. And these 2 main negatives run throughout the entire film and ultimately kill it. It was painful to sit thru. So just wait for the dvd release and use the chapter stop feature.
Burke
