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The horror. The horror. In my last review, for "3000 Miles to Graceland", I issued a warning urging moviegoers to stay out of the cineplex until the crap strom that is Febuarary is over. After seeing "MonkeyBone", the warning has been stepped up to a full scale quarentine.

Early in his career, Henry Selick directed "The Nightmare Before Christmas"...yeah, right...he directed that movie like Irvin Kirshner directed "The Empire Strikes Back". Anyway, without Tim Burton here to direct his movie for him, Selick's weakness as a director shows through. His visuals are outrageous and inventive, as an art director this man is in league with the best. Costumes, make-up and set design combined to make the film almost worth seeing. Almost. While I rip into Selick's abilities (or lack there of) as a director, I should note that screenwriter Sam Hamm is no help at all. The plot doesn't lend itself very well to comedy.

Cartoonist Stu Miley (Brendan Fraser) is about to really hit it big with his creation, the dirty little monkey known as MonkeyBone. Stu shuns his potential for material success, prefering instead to spend quality time with his girlfriend, sleep specialist Julie McElroy (Bridget Fonda), not a bad choice, if you ask me. After all, she's the one who cured his nightmares thereby enabiling him to create the naughty primate. Anyway, while fleeing a press junket Fraser and Fonda get into a car accident that leaves him in a coma. The coma places him in a world composed primarily of his own dark thoughts. A world called Downtown, between Life and Death. The leader of Downtown convinces Stu that he can escape back to Earth by stealing an exit pass from Death (the drop dead awful Whoopi Goldberg). So the whole thing is a set up. Stu gets the pass, Monkeybone (the figment of his imagination personified) steals it from him and returns to Earth in Stu's body. Sound dumb? It is. The whole thing was a plan for MonkeyBone to get up there and use a chemical that causes nightmares to take over the world...or at least cause everyone to have bad dreams. Why? So the citizens of Downtown can watch them. Sound lame? It is. Sound funny? You're right, it doesn't. So, MonkeyBone goes back and starts acting like an asshole and the movie sucks. Finally, Stu convinces Death (did I mention how bad Whoopi is?) to let him go back to stop MonkeyBone. For stupid reasons she does. Stu returns to earth in the body of a recently deceased organ donor (Chris Kattan) and it is at this point, with only maybe fifteen minutes left in the film that it gets funny. Kattan goes running around trying to stop Monkeybone in the body of someone with a broken neck, meanwhile he's being chased by the doctors (led by Bob Odenkirk) that were profiting from his donated organs. Trust me, it's fucking hilarious.

The cast perfroms admiraly considered they are saddled with a dreadfully unfunny script. Hamm, who wrote the first two Batman movies can do dark, just obviously not dark comedy. Dave Foley plays Stu's sleazy profiteer agent. I just don't like it when Foley tries playing sleazy, it doesn't work for me. Rose McGowan plays Kitty, Stu's only friend in Downtown, she looks really, really hot and turns in her most varied role ever. As the voice of MonkeyBone, Jon Tuturro is unreckognizable and I'm sure he likes it that way. A few cameos worthy of note: As Edgar Allen Poe is Edgar Allen Poe IV...pretty funny that and Harry Knowles of "Ain't it Cool News" as a nieghbor. What a freaking sell-out. Hey, bubba, don't trash movies if your going to cash out to be in a shitty one, okay?

In summation, if it's a choice between "MonkeyBone" and a kick in the nuts...brace yourself and ask for another, it's worth it.

SHOW ME THE FECES

by pat

Monkeys are known for flinging crap. Just wanted to point that out. Okay, real person trapped in the world of cartoons, or some such thing. Did anyone see "Cool World?" Well, of course not, but everyone knew about it, and avoided it like Nick Nolte in a raquetball court. Why try again? The idea of nightmares being distributed around the world: "Neil Gaiman's Sandman," "Twice Upon a Time," "Freddy's Dead," and "Rotten.Com" have all covered this. The idea of an unlikeable little creature annoying all the leads without charm or real purpose was covered earlier this weekend by the damn annoying kid from "3KM2G."

Enough with originality. With as many used ideas as this movie has, it should have been remotely plausable. The character of MonkeyBone is not funny. The opening cartoon shows a kid get a boner because his old teacher has flabby flappy arms. Suddenly a monkey pops out of his bookbag, does a little dance, end of cartoon. Call me crazy, but I'm gonna tape every episode. The network agrees and orders a bunch of episodes. These are the same people who cancelled "Quantum Leap," and should be forced to clean the monkey house on chili day.

With the creator in a coma, the show may or may not have become a huge hit or even aired, considering the time it takes to animate a series, but Miley is a celebrity all of a sudden, much in the way the creator of "Small Wonder" had his 15 seconds. What does this celebrity get him? They make farting MonkeyBone dolls that can be used to emit bad dream gas, mushroom and black olive pizza in its purest form. How the creator of the cartoon gets every toy manufactured to be stored in his garage is I suppose logical, considering the eccentricities of the rich, but there were a lot of toys, it was a small garage, and he didn't have much nightmare juice.

I suppose really, the only nightmare would have been if the film had good advertising and had a $60 milion opening, because then we'd all be traumatized beyond belief, and mankind would reduce in intellect to the point where "Baywatch Midafternoons" would be a top ten show for the UPN. That is a world nobody wants. If the movie is ever on cable, tune in to the last fifteen minutes or so, and then go on with your life. That last chunk really is fucking funny.