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Monkeybone review

The imaginary world depicts the comatose hero's dreams, using live action,
stop motion and computer graphics. Director Henry Selick ("The Nightmare
Before Christmas") knows animation and is in complete command. The effects are
so seamless that it's only later that one realizes what had to go into them.
In the moment, it all just flows.

For some viewers, the visuals will be enough. Brendan Fraser, as a
cartoonist lost in his own nightmare, inhabits an unusual landscape. It looks
like an amusement park at night, only here the stuffed animals talk, monsters
lurk around every corner and new constellations have a way of lighting up the
sky.

WHERE'S THE SCRIPT?

But the script — oh, that script. And the story — oh, that story. Lacking
a decent story, "Monkeybone" must hold audiences, moment by moment, with
whatever eye candy it can manage to throw. That works for about 10 minutes,
maybe 20, at most 30. Then the film becomes a flailing mess.

Fraser plays Stu, a shy cartoonist who has created Monkeybone, an animated
character that expresses his own wild side. In Freudian terms, Monkeybone
embodies pure id; he's totally selfish, totally libidinous. According to the
movie, Monkeybone is like a walking, thinking penis, turned loose on the world.

No, this is not a children's movie.

Stu is about to become famous for Monkeybone when disaster strikes. He and
his girlfriend (Bridget Fonda), a dream researcher, are in a car accident. She
walks away with a few scratches, but he's out for the count — in a coma and
dreaming. And poor Stu does not have a mind one would want to be trapped
inside.

'NIGHTMARE JUICE'

But trapped he is, and trapped we are, for much of what follows. Relief
comes in the form of live-action scenes, with Fonda trying to figure out ways
to wake Stu up. She gives him "nightmare juice" to scare him awake; and then
it's back inside Stu's head again, as he tries to trick Death (Whoopi
Goldberg) into letting him out.

Fraser, an actor with a lot of surprises in him, shows yet another side in
this film. As Stu, he is withdrawn and diffident. Later, when Monkeybone takes
over his body, he is completely abandoned, physically and facially — dancing,
mugging, clowning. Fraser's capacity to let go and follow his impulses marks
him as a genuine and generous talent.

Stu has to get his body back, and his girlfriend wants her boyfriend back,
not this maniac inhabited by Monkeybone. But it's hard for the viewer to care,
or even be all that amused, as the picture — reflecting, perhaps, the
filmmakers' desperation to maintain interest at all costs — gets more and
more grotesque.

The movie hits bottom in a scene in which a corpse (Chris Kattan), in the
process of having its organs removed for transplant, suddenly reanimates and
runs out of the operating room. As he runs,
various organs fall out of his body, and the doctors pick them up and put them in an ice
chest. Like "Monkey-bone" in general, this is too grotesque for children and just too silly for their parents.

This film contains graphic
violence and sexual situations.

E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.

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