Cast: Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, Rose McGowan, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Kattan, Dave Foley, Megan Mullally, Giancarlo Esposito, voice of John Turturro
Director: Henry Selick
Producers: Michael Barnathan, Chris Columbus, Mark Radcliffe
Screenplay: Sam Hamm, based on the graphic novel "Dark Town" by Kaja Blackley
Cinematography: Andrew Dunn
Music: Anne Dudley
U.S. Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Not that long ago, it was a painstaking task to mix animated characters with real ones. But not any more - now, with digital techniques, the co-mingling can be almost seamless. By today's standards, the once cutting-edge approach of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? seems antiquated and clumsy. With his latest film, director Henry Selick (the man behind The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach) uses the latest methods of computer enhancement to combine human actors with a variety of weird, non-human counterparts (some of which are people in costumes and some of which are not). The most obviously animated of these is the title character, a talking, hyperactive simian named "Monkey Bone".
Give actor Brendan Fraser credit for not resting on his laurels and doing safe projects. He has the looks and charisma to be a king of romantic comedies, but he has recently shied away from formula endeavors in favor of offbeat fare. In the last few years, he has played a bumbling cartoon character come to life (George of the Jungle), a 30-something man who has never met a woman other than his mother (Blast From the Past), and multiple variations of someone who makes a pact with the devil (Bedazzled). Now, he can add to that resume the part of a comic strip artist who returns from a coma with his animated alter-ego in control of his body. Monkey Bone is the latest movie to offer a sampling of Fraser's largely unsung versatility.
Fraser plays Stu Miley, the creator of Monkey Bone, "America's most disturbed comic strip." On the night he is planning to propose to his girlfriend, Julie (Bridget Fonda), he is involved in an automobile accident that leaves him in a coma. As Stu lies in a hospital bed with friends and family gathered around him, a drama is being played out in his subconscious -- he is trapped in a weird, nightmarish place called Downtown, where all comatose people stay until they regain consciousness or die. The denizens of Downtown gain their entertainment from watching the dreams of people in the real world. Stu is a star, because his dreams were the most popular. And, in Downtown, Monkey Bone is no longer a figment of his imagination, but a real creature who is armed with a wisecrack for every situation (and whose voice is provided by John Turturro). Together, Stu and Monkey Bone plot a way for him to return to his body - this involves a visit to Death (Whoopi Goldberg) - but, at the last minute, Monkey Bone betrays Stu and it's the cartoon character, not the artist, who ends up inhabiting the body in the real world.
Monkey Bone is sly, irreverent, and occasionally downright nasty. Its PG-13 rating is well-earned. The title character is a randy little monkey, and his habits (both before and after he enters Fraser's bodies) may confuse children. Parents who think they're taking little Johnny or Susie to a cute family film are encouraged to preview the movie first. The target audience for Monkey Bone is teenagers and adults - not the group that Disney aims their animated features at.
Like Selick's previous two mainstream films, The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, Monkey Bone is a fantasy that plumbs the realms of the dark side of imagination. Downtown is populated by the most bizarre group of alien creatures this side of the Star Wars cantina. In fact, in the entire menagerie within Stu's subconscious, only Death and a pretty biped feline named Kitty (Rose McGowan) look remotely normal. Set design easily rivals that of How the Grinch Stole Christmas for the most inventive in the last six months. Overall, Monkey Bone may not attain the level of technical achievement that Selick's other animated features reached, but it's still innovative enough to catch the attention. Other than Jar-Jar Binks and Rocky & Bullwinkle, there haven't been many digitally animated sidekicks for real-life human beings.
The storyline and action have a comic book feel to them, which is not surprising, considering that Monkey Bone is adapted from a graphic novel called "Dark Town". The movie is fun, unpretentious, and well-paced. It doesn't do everything perfectly (for example, there are times when the film's satirical edge could use a little sharpening - such as the business with Stu and his sister's "death pact", or the organ donor stuff, which goes on for too long), but it offers likable characters and an entertaining story - and that's more than can be said of too many motion pictures being slipped into multiplexes these days.
© 2001 James Berardinelli