Monkeybone

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Monkeybone

The movie cover for Monkeybone.
Directed by Henry Selick
Produced by Michael Barnathan
Mark Radcliffe
Written by Kaja Blackley
Sam Hamm
Starring Brendan Fraser
Bridget Fonda
Whoopi Goldberg
Rose McGowan
Dave Foley
Thomas Haden Church
Giancarlo Esposito
Chris Kattan
Music by Anne Dudley
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) February 23, 2001
Running time 77 min.
Language English
Budget $75,000,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

Monkeybone is a 2001 film, that combines live-action with stop-motion animation. It was based on Kaja Blackley's graphic novel Dark Town. The movie stars Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Thomas Haden Church, Rose McGowan, Dave Foley, Giancarlo Esposito & Chris Kattan, and was directed by Henry Selick.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Stu Miley (Brendan Fraser) is a cartoonist who created a comic strip called Monkeybone which features a rascal monkey. Stu is in love with a sleep institute worker named Dr. Julie McElroy (Bridget Fonda), who helped him deal with his terrible nightmares. She was able to stop the nightmares that Stu had by getting him to change the hand that he drew with. On the night when he is going to propose to her, a freak accident happens and Stu gets into a car accident and falls into a coma. His spirit ends up in Downtown: a purgatory limbo-like existence between life and death. Downtown is a carnival landscape populated by human beings, mythical creatures, and figments of people's imaginations, and where nightmares are entertainment. This is where Monkeybone (voiced by John Turturro) comes to life and stirs up trouble for Stu. Stu befriends a catgirl named Kitty (Rose McGowan), who falls in love with him. When Stu learns that his sister Kimmy (Megan Mullally) is about to pull the plug on his comatose body, he asks Hypnos: The God of Sleep (Giancarlo Esposito) what to do. Hypnos tells Stu that to get back to the living, he has to steal an Exit Pass from Death (Whoopi Goldberg) who lives in the Land of Death. However, Monkeybone and Hypnos have their own agenda with Stu's body when it comes to making nightmares. When Stu steals the Exit Pass, Monkeybone steals it back and leaves Downtown and goes into the Land of the Living in Stu's body. Monkeybone awakes in Stu's body a mere second or so before they are about to unplug him, leaving Stu to figure out how to get his body back from Monkeybone. Hypnos' plan is to use Stu's body to get a substance that Dr. Julie McElroy developed that gives people and animals nightmares.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Cast

NOTE: In the Monkeybone webisodes on BiteMyMonkey.com, Wally Wingert provides the voice of Monkeybone.

[edit] Graphic novel

The graphic novel Dark Town, on which Monkeybone is very loosely based, was created by Kaja Blackley and illustrated by Vanessa Chong. The graphic novel was published by Mad Monkey Press specifically in the hope that someone would base a film on it. There was little interest in this graphic novel, and publication ceased after the first book of the series.

[edit] Trivia

  • The painting supposedly drawn by Stu before undergoing therapy is very similar to The Birth, by Mark Ryden. Much of the film's art bears a strong resemblance to that of Ryden—for example, the bust of Abraham Lincoln as "The Great Emancipator"; however Ryden is not credited.
  • Brendan Fraser and Thomas Hayden Church star in this movie. They also starred together in George of the Jungle.
  • Though credited as "Man in the Dungeon," Jon Bruno portrays Stephen King since the real one was recovering from an accident at the time.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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