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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Monkeybone (2001)

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 4)

Chimpsy

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Moneybone on DVD

Henry Selick, the amazing director behind The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James and the Giant Peach (1996) returns with a more live-action oriented movie. Brendan Fraser stars as a cartoonist and the creator of Monkeybone, an annoying animated monkey. Fraser falls into a coma and enters a surreal nightmare world, leaving his lovely fiancee (Bridget Fonda) hanging in the real world. Monkeybone, who also lives in the nightmare world, schemes to enter Fraser's body and take over his life. Though this material should have been either funny or scary or unusual, it's just plain limp. The movie doesn't seem to have a purpose other than to fill space. Unlike Roger Rabbit, we never get to know Moneybone enough to respect him as a viable character, and the human heroes are too darn ordinary. Only Chris Kattan (Saturday Night Live) spruces things up by playing a re-animated corpse with a broken neck.

Starring: Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, John Turturro (voice), Chris Kattan, Giancarlo Esposito, Rose McGowan, Dave Foley, Megan Mullally, Bob Odenkirk, Pat Kilbane, Lisa Zane, Whoopi Goldberg, Sandra Thigpen, Wayne Wilderson, Amy Higgins, Doug Jones
Written by: Sam Hamm, based on a graphic novel by Kaja Blackley
Directed by: Henry Selick
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude humor and some nudity
Running Time: 93 minutes
Date: February 23, 2001