Product Description

It's rude! It's raunchy! It's totally outrageous! Brendan Fraser goes bananas in this comedy that breaks all the rules. After a car crash sends repressed cartoonist Stu Miley (Fraser) into a coma, he and the mischievous Monkeybone, his hilariously horny alter-ego, wake up in a wacked-out waystation for lost souls. When Monkeybone takes over Stu's body and escapes to wreak havoc on the real world, Stu has to find a way to stop him before his sister pulls the plug on reality forever!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15612 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-05-21
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Live, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 93 minutes

Amazon.com
Brendan Fraser plays the best-looking cartoonist you'll ever see in Monkeybone. Stu (Fraser) has created an animated character named Monkeybone, who sprang from his repressed sexual anxieties. He's just sold his animated series to a cable channel, and is being bombarded with proposals for toys and other marketing extravaganzas, when he and his girlfriend Julie (Bridget Fonda) get into a car wreck and Stu falls into a coma. But comas are much more complicated than you might expect: Stu finds himself in Down Town, where lives a mixture of other people in comas and figments of these people's imaginations. Naturally, Monkeybone himself is there, and he and Stu quickly start fighting like cats and dogs. When Stu realizes that his sister, due to a pact they once made, is preparing to pull the plug on him, Stu makes a deal with Hypnos, the god of sleep, to help him steal a golden ticket from Death himself (or herself, as Death is played by Whoopi Goldberg). Sound complicated? Well, from there it only gets more ornate. Monkeybone is a bit of a mess, but it's never boring, and every now and then it roars to amazingly dynamic life. Fraser is excellent, and the strong supporting cast includes Giancarlo Esposito (Do the Right Thing), Rose McGowan (Scream), Dave Foley (Brain Candy), and Saturday Night Live's Chris Kattan as a gymnast with a broken neck who... well, it's a bit complicated to explain. A crazy quilt of a movie, chock-full of delirious ideas and inspired moments. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

A mess of a film, yes...But also brilliant...
"Monkeybone" is the type of experimental, twisted movie that is destined to become a cult classic. Mixing shades of Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice" with an enormous variety of influences such as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," "All of Me," "Alice in Wonderland," and even "Regarding Henry," this movie is a stop-motion cartoon, a live-action love story, a dark comedy, a fantasy, a Freudian nightmare, and more. It contains an extremely diverse and unusual cast, including Brendan Fraser as a cartoonist in a coma, Bridget Fonda as his fiancee, Whoopi Goldberg as Death (yes, you read that right), Chris Kattan as the decomposing corpse of a gymnast, Megan Mullally as the cartoonist's sister who is very eager to pull the plug, Dave Foley as the cartoonist's manager, and Rose McGowan as a kitty cat (yes, once again, you read that right)! It also contains bizzare, strange, and cool animation by director Henry Selick, who also directed Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas."

Ostensibly, "Monkeybone" is the story about an artist's struggle between artistic integrity and cartoonish commercialism, about the difference between a work of art and a mere doodle, a satire about the consequences of "selling out." It is also a Freudian fairy tale about a man whose sexual id is represented by a cartoon monkey. Monkeybone is literally this man's erection. The story is an examination of what happens when one lets one's id take over his whole life. It is a psychological analysis of what nightmares are made of. It is a surrealistic comedy containing some of the most startling, visually stunning images you are likely to see on film for a long time, including strange representations of many classical, mythological creatures. It is a love story. While this might sound like the premise of an independant film, this is actually a big budget film that was marketed to look like a children's movie. Not a good idea.

It's no wonder this movie did so poorly at the box office. Believe it or not, this film is the type that should have been playing at small art houses, not mainstream movie theatres. Even the cover box says it's the crudest movie since "South Park." In short, the studio didn't know how to market its own movie.

This movie is an extremely likable one, hilariously funny at times, always seriously bizarre, and obviously the work of a demented genius. It is hard to deny the brilliant artistry involved, and the all-around great acting by the cast. In fact, I respect every actor in this film immensely, especially the big budget ones such as Whoopi Goldberg and Brendan Fraser. This is the type of weird movie they didn't have to do, but chose to do. It is a project they wanted to be involved in, and I respect them for that.

Typically, most of the reviewers, mostly in the middle of the country, panned this film. However, many major newspapers and publications, such as "The New York Times," and "Entertainment Weekly" gave it great reviews, despite its messy nature.

And this is one of the few movies in recent history in which its mess actually adds to its likability. A more polished version of this film would be not be half as enjoyable, brilliant, crazy, or maddening as this truly original, insane piece of filmmaking. As it is now, the viewer constantly wonders what strange happening will occur next, and, trust me, it is always stranger than you thought it would be.

I would not recommend this film to everyone. I would probably recommend it mostly to serious movie buffs or lovers of very original, non-mainstream film, who enjoy Tim Burton/Sam Raimiesque humor in their cinema. If you're in the most for something completely and utterly different in every way, buy this movie.

I was dying laughing!
This was a weird movie and very funny. At one point I fell off of the couch laughing and we had to stop the DVD! We were both laughing so hard we couldn't hear what was going on so we had to play it again. We are going to buy this one for sure!

Appealing to many types of viewers
I have to say I'm surprised and glad to see the praise this movie is getting. I thought I'd have to come in and defend it, but I see you all have some taste ;)

I talked to two people at work about this movie after I saw it. All three of us have different tastes and all three got something different out of it. I am the animation fanatic, and was interested in seeing another film by the director of Nightmare before Christmas. I enjoy Henry Selick's style and vision, and saw it come through quite well at moments in the film. It's funny that the things I did not like so much about the movie were what my co-workers (and some reviewers here) liked best. Bill is an SNL and comedy lover, and watched purely for that aspect. He thought the movie was hilarious but a little too weird. And my film snobby assistant was impressed with the insider jokes and references, half of which I didn't even catch.

This is why I give the film four stars. It is very good. We all liked it. But none of us loved it 100%. Of course, if we had had, one of us would give it five stars and the others would pan it completely. I guess that's the problem with trying to please everyone all the time. At least Monkeybone comes close, and I recommend it equally to animation, cult film, and comedy lovers.