Monkeybone

Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg! It's the end of the 90s like crazy. Plus, if, like me, you see in Monkeybone an attempt to follow up the cult classic The Mask with Jim Carrey or an attempt to translate the Cartoon Network's aesthetic of hyperactive tastelessness into a feature film format, it works. Monkeybone is a film that would have a problem once that whole whirlwind of screaming, nonsensical, and totally wild ideas came to a momentary halt, which thankfully doesn't happen. (17/09/2020)

In Monkeybone, Selick brings the silliness of 1990s animation to a magnificent conclusion. But unfortunately for him and the film’s reception, the whole project was outdated by the time it reached cinemas. At the turn of the millennium, everyone was singing the praises of computer-generated animated movies for the whole family, while animation targeted at adolescent and adult audiences became the domain of cable channels after several failed attempts to break into cinemas. Monkeybone comes across as an amalgamation of the ambitions and styles of the ’90s – from the wild creativity of MTV and Cartoon Network series and the cunning humour of Doug TenNapel’s work, to the meta-genre nature and subversiveness of Ralph Bakshi’s last feature film, Cool World, and the bizarre mix of bleakness and warmth in Selick’s previous stop-motion projects. Monkeybone deserves attention at least with respect to its craftsmanship and the combination of live actors and animation, as well as the variety of ideas used in the execution of the project. The filmmakers sometimes worked with post-production composites of shots of the actors and stop-motion animation, while at other times they had the actors interact with life-size puppets. Some of the fantastical characters were created with the help of actors or puppeteers controlling mechanical masks, as well as with a combination of ingenious costumes and post-production deletion of body parts in greenscreen suits. The story of a comatose cartoonist who not only has to find his way out of the great beyond, but also reclaim his body, which has been taken over by a malevolent ape from his imagination, serves Selick’s purpose of creating and populating a deranged netherworld, as well as stylishly bringing reality and animation together. His main partner in this is Brendan Fraser, who shows tremendous acting chops and dedication to his expressively physical portrayal of the ape (many years before he captivated everyone in The Whale). (15/01/2023)