Henry Selick’s Monkeybone (2001) is a loose adaptation of Kaja Blackley and Vanessa Chong’s comic Dark Town with a heavy dose of Ralph Bakshi’s Cool World (1992) thrown in. When Selick brought Monkeybone to the screen he was best known for having helmed the stop-motion animation features The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James & The Giant Peach (1996); both of which influenced the unique visual effects of his Dark Town adaptation. The stop-motion animation effects that incorporate designs directly from the Dark Town comic remain the most visually arresting aspects of the film and its most palatable feature overall.
For Selick, the social dichotomy of Christmas versus Halloween in The Nightmare Before Christmas is reiterated, with just as much fantasy, in the war between Downtown Hypnos and the land of the living in Monkeybone. The Darwinian politics of these relationships forms the dramatic momentum of both films as these conflicts threaten the heroes’ ability to reunite with their true love. However, in Monkeybone, it is suggested that the physical sphere of Hypnos actually resides within the subconscious of all mankind which recasts the conflict as one wholly interior to the protagonist’s psyche. This battle for agency in the “real world” between cartoonist Stu Miley (Brendan Fraser) and his comic creation Monkeybone (voiced by John Turturro) is akin to the relationship between a person’s Ego and Id.
To that end, the design of Downtown Hypnos often mirrors aspects of Stu’s “real world”, particularly as nightmares are broadcast from the minds of those in the “real world” to the screens and crystal balls that populate social spaces in Hypnos. Everything in the realms of the dead and of Hypnos takes on the otherworldly and macabre atmosphere of Selick’s work with and for Tim Burton. These sequences may lack the narrative imagination and originality of Bakshi’s über kinky Cool World, but they are its equal in production design.
The problem with Monkeybone is that the look of the “real world” and that of these fantasy realms is so startlingly different while the performances of the actors is consistently campy throughout. When Monkeybone posses Stu’s body, Fraser’s performance equals that of Dave Foley and Megan Mullally as they chew up the scenery. Behavior, human and creature, lacks any meaningful difference and thus leaves the dramatic stakes of many of the plot developments weak or uneven. Standout supporting performances from Rose McGowan and Whoopi Goldberg may help counter this effect but can never truly compensate for it.
The fact that Monkeybone works as a film at all is down to Brendan Fraser. Two years prior to Joe Dante’s underrated Looney Tunes: Back In Action (2003), Fraser cut his teeth as a leading man in animation and live-action blockbuster hybrids with Monkeybone. And in Monkeybone Fraser appears already totally at ease interacting with figures who aren’t really there. Fraser proves he can fill a dramatic space just as convincingly as Bob Hoskins did in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). It’s just unfortunate that Sam Hamm’s screenplay wasn’t worthy of Fraser’s talents.
