As id-driven a creation as its title character -- pure, unstructured imagination with a fatally short attention span.
Monkeybone (2001)
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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.
Theatrical Release:Feb 23, 2001 Wide
Box Office: $4,942,155
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
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Reviews for Monkeybone
A lot of eye-catching costumes and effects in search of a plot. And, often, basic coherency.
Fails to provide any real interesting characters that you want to root for.
For all its antic grasping it lies flatter on the screen than its graphic novel source lies on the page.
Things plod along sloppily and gratingly for the majority of the film.
You can almost see money dripping off the walls of the sets and cybersets in this special-effects extravaganza.
The movie labors hard, the special effects are admirable, no expense has been spared, and yet the movie never takes off.
It's pretty funny. It's absurdist funny, not so much situational as just weird and cool and "yikes!" and surreal.
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 story is frustrating in its refusal to stick to any logical core -– emotionally or otherwise.
Selick appears to be copping Burton's 'vibe' ... and rather unsuccessfully at that.
An ugly mishmash of stop-motion animation, bad Halloween costumes and worse acting.
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