Hey folks, Harry here... back at Geek Headquarters in Austin and in 6 hours I'll be sitting in a far South Austin Movie theater watching this film. My anticipation is that I will be profoundly disappointed in the movie and will feel sad for what it could have been. But I'm going to try to see it with an open mind. Courtney certainly seems to have liked it quite a bit, so it is possible to enjoy. I'll write you later tomorrow with my take on it all... Here's that... well you know...
That Snot-Nosed Pom-Pom Slut Courtney Pierce returns to Monkey it up.
Here it is, boys and girls, the first dadaist screwball comedy ready-made for Freudian deconstruction. At its heart is the story of how art (painting, cartooning, and Rube Goldberg device construction) enables a man (Brendan Fraser, as good here as he was in Gods and Monsters) to come to terms with his rampant id (the titular character, a stop-motion whirlwind of energy voiced by John Turturro, here in manic mode), escape his own psychological baggage (literally), and snag a happy ending with the girl of his dreams (the always lovely and talented Bridget Fonda). In addition to that, the film is the most profoundly imaginative of its kind to come out of Hollywood in many years, packed to its very gills with the strange and unusual (as Lydia Dietz would say) denizens of "Downtown," an interlocking land of dream and comascapes which is bordered by the domain of Death (Whoopi Goldberg), whose minions ride about on winged bicycles.
The film's script, by Sam Hamm, is somewhat patchy, as certain plotpoints are glossed over (or omitted entirely; for instance, what is the connection between Stu and Kitty?), and yet I feel capable of a lot of forgiveness, because it seems like that could be said of every comedy I've seen so far this year (Saving Silverman, Down to Earth, Double Take), and at least this one makes up for it with invention, joyfully trippy art direction, and imagination (for instance, the surreal sequence in which a monkey-directed Fraser does an interpretive erotic dance for Fonda to Jimi Hendrix' "Foxey Lady." Believe you me, it is on a par with Romy & Michele's High School Reunion for hysterical dance sequences. It's also hot, too.). As a matter of fact, Romy & Michele's High School Reunion is a great comparison point, because that was truly one of the last daffy and surreal comedies that registered at this high of a level in my jaded moviegoing heart.
I can't give a flawless rating for a film that misuses the divine Megan Mullally as badly as this one (and by the way, her band The Supreme Music Program's album The Sweetheart Break-In was the best record of 2000 and entirely worth checking out), and the from-out-of-nowhere musical number ("Brick House"?) during a climactic museum banquet undermines some good will. But I love a film that shows me new and interesting things, and this film is so fertile with uniquity (did you ever wonder what a dog's nightmares would look like? Did you know that Abraham Lincoln truly is the great emancipator? Did you know that there is a logical explanation for a certain author's twenty-five most recent years of work?) that one viewing is simply not enough. Equal parts David Lynch's "On The Air" and John R. Dilworth's "The Dirdy Birdy."
(btw: Hey Harry, how come whenever you're in a movie, they always link your character to water? It works though, it provides your work with thematic unity.)
