umble cartoonist Stu Miley (Fraser) is on the verge of becoming a
sensation. His comic strip, Monkeybone, starring a precocious simian of the
same name, is about to become a television series. The marketing campaigns
and merchandising deals are in place, practically guaranteeing the show's
success.
Only Stu isn't interested in the trappings of fame and fortune. He is
content with nothing more than the love of his faithful girlfriend, Julie.
On the night of his big unveiling, while everyone else is celebrating, he
takes Julie home with the intention of proposing. Unfortunately, a freak
automobile accident on the way home leaves Stu comatose before he has a
chance to pop the question.
While Julie sits vigilantly by his hospital bed, Stu's mind embarks a
wild journey. He finds himself in a nightmarish world full of bizarre
characters and fantastical landscapes. This is Downtown, a way station for
those caught between life and death. Its inhabitants are figments of
imagination literally dreamed up by humans in their dark fantasies and
nightmares. Among them is Stu's own impish creation, Monkeybone.
Stu desperately wants to get back to Julie, but Monkeybone has other
plans. He has struck a deal with Hypnos, the god of sleep and ruler of
Downtown, to use Stu as his unwitting accomplice in stealing an exit pass.
In exchange for Hypnos' assistance, Monkeybone will distribute a nightmare
serum to humans all over the world so that Downtown may have an influx of
new creations.
Monkeybone uses the pass to escape into the real world and take over
Stu's body. He embraces the success that Stu once shunned while the real Stu
languishes in a dungeon below Downtown. Now he must find a way to escape and
stop Monkeybone from turning the world into a living nightmare.
There's no meat on these bones
The marketing campaign for this film touts the fact that it comes from the
director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it's not hard to see
the comparison. The strikingly imaginative stop-motion characters and
eye-popping backdrop of Downtown bear a strong resemblance to the visuals in
that film. But that is where the similarities end. It's clear that Selick
has tried his best to ape Tim Burton's style, but he just doesn't have the
latter director's sense of storytelling or character insight required to
make it work.
The cast of characters that populate Downtown are certainly imaginative,
most notably Rose McGowan's sexy cat girl and Giancarlo Esposito as the
satyr-like god Hypnos. The striking netherworld sequences are the most
interesting parts of the film, and it would have benefited from spending more
time there. As the hero, Fraser's Stu is so vanilla and bland that it's
difficult to care much about him. It isn't until Stu's body becomes
possessed by the monkey's personality that Fraser's performance really comes
alive.
There are some genuine laughs here, too. Admirably, and somewhat
surprisingly, gags of the monkey-as-euphemism-for-male-member genre are kept
to a minimum. Most of the comedy comes near the end of the film, when Stu
possesses the body of a dead gymnast in the midst of organ donation, played
by Chris Kattan. Kattan runs through the streets on rubbery limbs followed
by a team of doctors who scoop up his organs as he drops them along the way.
It's an odd change of pace in the film, but a welcome one.
With another draft of the script and more attention to story and
character development, this film could have been something special. While
traces of brilliance are evident here and there, it's not enough to form a
coherent whole.
