| Written by John Shea,
on 03-02-2001 08:00
|
Published in : Reviews, Movies |
Just what sort of movie was this supposed to be? If it was a comedy then it forgot to add the laughs. If it was some sort of psychological thriller meant to tap the inner workings of the mind, it forgot to thrill. Or be interesting for that matter. It can't be a romance because the lead character and his girlfriend get next to no time together. It's not drama because there's nothing dramatic about it. I'm going to call it really cool looking movie that goes nowhere and has no point.
 I get a lot of email from people telling me to just lighten up and let movies just be fun. I'd love to do that but I'm saddled with this weird need for a movie to get a reaction out of me. Apart from the periodic thought of "Huh, that looks pretty cool," Monkeybone largely fails to make me react to it.
The movie is about Stu (Brendan Fraser) Miley (S. Miley, get it?), a cartoonist who draws a popular strip about a deranged monkey called Monkeybone. Things are going well for Stu. He's getting a TV series based on his strip and he's about to propose to his girlfriend. Unfortunately, before any of that can happen he is involved in a car accident that leaves him in a coma. Stu suddenly finds himself in a bizarre world called Downtown. This is where everybody goes while they wait for their body to snap out of a coma or die. Here Stu meets the living embodiment of his cartoon character Monkeybone (John Turturro).
This crazed simian constantly cracks jokes and does all sorts of wacky things that don't seem at all calculated. No, it's natural zaniness we've got going here that's for sure. Cut down to it's most basic elements, and frankly there wasn't much of an effort made to elevate this concept any higher than that, Monkeybone represents Stu's penis. And of course we all know that men are ruled by their dicks and thus behave stupidly. I'm not getting too sarcastic here am I? Anyway, that's exactly the behavior the monkey exhibits and pretty soon he's suckered Stu into a complex plot to escape Downtown. Long story short (too late!), Stu is stuck in Downtown and Monkeybone is now in control of Stu's body.
I suspect that this movie has been pretty brutally edited to alter it to someone's idea of what a surreal movie experience should be. For a movie with the intriguing concept of an artist who loses control of himself to his own creations, the story seems awfully muddled and flat. A movie with such a wild and unique visual experience is hardly one you would expect such weak humor from. Much of the movie seems like a joke we only got to hear the punchline of. For instance there is a lot made of Stu's tortured dreams but we never really get a feel for him as a suffering artist. The only reason we know of this part of Stu is because his girlfriend tells us so, rather matter of factly.
Another large problem is that Monkeybone just isn't funny. This little orange monkey is supposed to be at the heart of a wildly popular comic strip but he rarely says or does anything funny. Even the brief piece we get to see of the TV show doesn't really generate any laughs. For that character to work he actually has to be funny. Yes he's outrageous but without a point to the outrageous behavior it isn't funny.
The movie is also filled with an assortment of pieces that don't seem to create a whole. There is a subplot that involves Monkeybone stealing "nightmare juice" to create more bad dreams for the residents of Downtown to enjoy. It appears half way through the movie and drops awkwardly away toward the end. At one point Stu meets Death, who turns out to be Whoopi Goldberg. This might have been funny but nothing is done with it. The entire joke seems to be that Whoopi Goldberg is death. Even downtown was a little hard to figure out as it seemed to be a part of
The only part of the movie that works unreservedly well is the Chris Kattan character. Stu is brought back to the real world in the body of a deceased Olympic gymnast with a broken neck. Kattan flops his way through these scenes with great energy, while all the time his head is flopping around on an amazingly rubbery neck. There's a bit more of it than that but I'll leave it unspoiled should you ignore my warnings and go see this movie anyway.
Kudos though to Fox marketing for managing to work the thinly veiled masturbatory phrase "choke my monkey" into all of their ads and the trailers. It's simply amazing what can be slipped past the supposedly vigilant MPAA censors.
This movie is just a big disappointment. It seems to be a bright idea that was hamstrung by some rather narrow minded thinking somewhere along the way. It's a shame. I would have loved to have watched a story to match those amazing visuals.
- John Shea
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