Monkeybone needs a spine

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2001 (8821 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THIS swingin’ combo of live-action, stop-motion animation and puppetry is ingenious, diverting, funny and yet. . .

Monkeybone features likable Brendan Fraser as Stu Miley, a geek cartoonist who’s finally completely happy, not because his anarchistic comic strip about a cheeky monkey is about to be picked up by network TV but because he’s crazy in love with Julie (Bridget Fonda), a sleep specialist and all-round swell gal.

Just as Stu is about to propose to Julie, a freak accident puts him in a coma. His body is on a clinical white hospital bed; his spirit, meanwhile, has descended into Downtown, a carnivalesque limbo populated by obsolete gods and monsters who crave human nightmares.

Stu has to find a way to outwit Death (played by Whoopi Goldberg), ditch Downtown and reclaim his body, before Monkeybone monkeys with his life.

Fraser is goofy-handsome as Stu and pulls off some terrific physical comedy when Stu’s body is occupied by the randy Monkeybone — there’s a hilariously animalistic seduction scene in which he literally hangs from the bedposts.

And SNL’s Chris Kattan gives an absolutely perfect comic performance as the decomposing body of a champion gymnast, which Stu takes as a “loaner” so that he can get a message to Julie. Kattan manages to do a dead-on Brendan Fraser imitation while back-flipping with a broken neck — a bravura turn!

The strong presence of actual people keeps the movie from being overwhelmed by special animation effects. (The fevered brain of Henry Selick, director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, is original but often overcrowded.)

But finally, the movie needs the courage to follow through on its own spooky premise. Though it’s based on the disturbing graphic novel Dark Town, Monkeybone has lightened things up, just skimming over whatever has caused Stu to become an artist who pours his anxieties and nightmares into imaginative creations. The film’s physical universe is complex; its psychological world is one-dimensional.

Finally, a note to parents: just because it’s animation doesn’t mean it’s for small children, unless you want to have long talks about monkey mating practices on the way home.