As id-driven a creation as its title character -- pure, unstructured imagination with a fatally short attention span.
Monkeybone (2001)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:111
Fresh:21
Rotten:90
Average Rating:3.8/10
Consensus: Though original and full of bizarre visuals, Monkeybone is too shapeless a movie, with unengaging characters and random situations that fail to build up laughs.
Runtime: 88 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: MONKEYBONE, directed by Henry Selick (JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS), is a fantasy adventure that combines live action, stop motion, claymation miniatures, puppets, and... MONKEYBONE, directed by Henry Selick (JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS), is a fantasy adventure that combines live action, stop motion, claymation miniatures, puppets, and computer imaging. Monkeybone is a cartoon character created by a successful comic book illustrator named Stu Miley (Brendan Fraser). (He wears a coat with the tag S. Miley, which is a good hint at the film's brand of pun-filled humor.) On the night that Stu is going to propose marriage to his girlfriend, Julie (Bridget Fonda), a freak accident throws him into a coma. Though he appears unconscious, lying in a hospital bed, he is actually having the strangest experience of his lifetime inside his own head. Trapped in a bizarre amusement park called Downtown, the land where nightmares are stored, Stu comes face to face with a living version of the small, mischievous Monkeybone (a stop-action paraffin sculpture voiced by John Turturro). The other inhabitants of Downtown are either part-humans like the seductive cat woman, Kitty (Rose McGowan) and the mysterious face of Death (Whoopi Goldberg), or beasts--Cyclops, Minotaurs, and Centaurs. While dodging obstacles from his own nightmares, Stu strives to break out of his coma and return to his true love. Little does he know, Monkeybone has plans of his own. [More]
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, Chris Kattan, Dave Foley
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, Chris Kattan, Dave Foley, Whoopi Goldberg, Rose McGowan, Christopher Franciosa, Giancarlo Esposito, Megan Mullally, Mary Pierce, Bob Odenkirk, John Turturro
Director: Henry Selick
Director: Henry Selick
Screenwriter: Sam Hamm
Producer: Mark Radce, Michael Barnathan
Composer: Anne Dudley
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Reviews for Monkeybone
Despite many visually zippy, imaginative moments, Monkeybone is Roger Rabbit redux and ridiculous.
One of those newfangled production design monstrosities that grabs you by the collar in the first ten minutes, then shakes you around like a rag doll until you're ready to drop.
The result is a script so needlessly complicated that it defies comprehension.
The guy can't control his 'monkey,' get it? Heh-heh. Yep, that's the whole concept. Heh. Pretty twisted, eh? Heh ... har ... um ... zzzzzz.
Selick proves a clumsy director of live-action scenes and never overcomes the muddled, half-baked script or the scatological gags.
A giddy madcap classic, one of the wildest and funniest American comedies in years.
Selick's live-action/animation blend eventually triumphs over a script loaded with lowbrow humor and cheap sentimentality.
You're never sure whether to feel jangled, confused or simply baffled.
Alternately mind-boggling and patience-testing, mixing astounding sequences of over-the-top invention with scenes of inept acting and indifferent filmmaking.
Too much of everything, a lo mein-stuffed lasagna in banana bechamel sauce. With a coffee malted. And pickles.
A welcome antidote to the epidemic of witless, frenetic, secondhand low comedies that gnaw at our brains like antibody-resistant spirochetes.
An incredible journey of the imagination, darkly humorous and zesty in spirit.
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