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Monkeybone [DVD]

Screenplay : Sam Hamm (based on the graphic novel Dark Town by Kaja Blackley)

MPAA Rating : PG-13

Year of Release : 2001

Stars : Brendan Fraser (Stu Miley), Bridget Fonda (Julie McElroy), Rose McGowan (Miss Kitty), Whoopi Goldberg (Death), Chris Kattan (Organ Donor), Dave Foley (Herb), Megan Mullally (Kimmy), Giancarlo Esposito (Hypnos)

In Monkeybone, Brendan Fraser plays Stu Miley, the mild-mannered creator of a cartoon nightmare knows as Monkeybone. Taking the form of a small, grinning simian with lanky arms and legs and a mouthful of shiny square teeth, the titular creation is a small dollop of pure id mixed in with everyone's worst dreams. He was originally invented as Stu's creative outlet to escape from a cycle of insomnia and nightmares, and the movie plays out like a cartoon variant of Freud's "return of the repressed."

When the movie opens, Monkeybone the comic strip has just been turned into a TV pilot for a cartoon cable channel, and the big corporations are lining up to get on the merchandising bandwagon. Stu doesn't like the idea of his creation being turned into lunchboxes, stuffed animals, and happy meals, despite the urgings of his manager, Herb (Dave Foley). When Stu attempts to get away from a corporate meeting, he and his girlfriend, a sleep doctor named Julie (Bridget Fonda) to whom he is about to propose marriage, end up in a car wreck that sends him into a coma.

And this is when the movie gets appropriately weird.

Director Henry Selick, who is known for helming the bizarrely enjoyable stop-motion animation films The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James and the Giant Peach (1996), is right in his element once Stu is hurled into Downtown, a carnivalesque dreamworld where people in comas bide their time while waiting for either an exit pass back into consciousness or a ride further down the tracks to Thanatopolis, which is presided over by Death herself in the form of Whoopi Goldberg.

Downtown is populated not only by apparently normal people who are in comas, but also a rogue's gallery of bizarre creatures, ranging from a cyclops with an oversized head, to a strange crab-like creature with a man's face, to a curvaceous feline waitress played by Rose McGowan. Mixing digital special effects with Jim Henson-like puppetry, stop-motion animation, and enormous sets, the scenes in Downtown are like something right out of one of Tim Burton's early films, especially Beetlejuice (1988), and Selick knows just how to milk these moments for maximum weirdness.

Unfortunately, the script by Sam Hamm, who also penned Burton's Batman (1989), proceeds to dive headfirst into a convoluted, often confusing plot involving Stu's simian cartoon creation taking over his physical body and devising a plan in which plush Monkeybone toys will be filled with a special chemical innocently devised by Julie to give people nightmares. This does involve an amusing scene in which Stu finds himself stuck in a prison in Downtown along with other famous men whose imaginary sidekicks took over their bodies in reality, including Edgar Allan Poe (it was a raven) and Stephen King (wouldn't you know it was Cujo?).

While Stu tries to devise a plan for escaping Downtown to reclaim his body, the spastic and horny Monkeybone freely uses Stu's physical body to his own ends back on earth. This scenario gives Brendan Fraser free comic reign to essentially act like an idiot, and while his monkey posturing is at times quite funny, the whole schtick gets old quickly.

Much, much funnier is the scenario in which Stu convinces Death to send him back to earth to stop Monkeybone. Death obliges, and Stu finds himself hurtled into the recently deceased body of Saturday Night Live's Chris Kattan, who has not only broken his neck in a freak gymnastics accident, but is literally on the surgeon's table having his organs removed for donation when Stu takes over his body. Kattan almost steals the movie as he runs through the streets in red Spandex, his head lolling from side to side on its broken neck (he eventually tapes it upright with a T-square) while a group of angry surgeons chases him. These scenes are almost shockingly grotesque, but also ludicrously hilarious. It's a gloriously fantastic gross-out, especially once Kattan's organs start falling out while he is dangling from a hot-air balloon, as well an ample demonstration of the elasticity of the by-now-meaningless PG-13 rating.

Despite these isolated moments of comic brilliance, as a whole, Monkeybone never quite comes together as it should. Fraser gives it his all as both the befuddled Stu and the manic Monkeybone (his entire career has been based on oscillating between complete normalcy and spastic eccentricity), and he and Bridget Fonda make a likable, believable couple who give some sense of gravity to the haphazard wackiness around them.

Perhaps the problem is Monkeybone himself. Although amusing, he doesn't seem quite outrageous or inventive enough to grab our attention. For all the time and effort that went into the movie's production (the budget has been reported as being around $80 million), one would think their central cartoon character would have been given a more unique and lasting personality. As is, he doesn't even seem to have been worth the repression.

©2001 James Kendrick