Random 90's Animation - "Monkeybone" (2001)

Note: I received and watched this movie way out of order too.  In fact, it wound up being the last movie I watched for this marathon.  Who would have ever expected "We're Back" and "Monkeybone" to be so popular?

Okay, technically, "Monkeybone" (alternately "MonkeyBone", but we're not going to be doing that) is a film from early 2001, but I felt it would be silly not to acknowledge it in a marathon of bizarre animated films from random studios.  And anyway, my OCD is sated a little: I think I've now seen all of Henry Selick's features

"MonkeyBone" is the story of a comicbook artist with some issues who has created a bizarre world full of strange creatures including a main character who is basically an unrepressed Id.  Due to complicated circumstances, the artist ends up traveling to the world of his comics which looks like nothing so much as what the director of the movie must have going on in his subconscious at all hours of the day.  There, the artist is haunted by his creations, including the main character, who turns out to be rather unappealing in person and longs to be real and to make out with a human.  Somehow that character turns into a human, and escapes into our world, much to the distress and inconvenience of their creator.  Before the character can cause utter chaos in our world, the comic artist fights to stop that character.  The movie basically just ends when the director seemingly ran out of ideas, but at least the comic character has been thwarted.

For some reason, this story felt a little bit familiar to me...

The good news is that "Monkeybone" is not nearly as obnoxious as "Cool World".  (Then again, few movies are.)  What "Monkeybone" is is basically just what I said: what I'd imagine Henry Selick sees when he closes his eyes.

Therefore, at the very least, "Monkeybone" is worth a look because it does not resemble anything else you have ever seen.  Love it or hate it, it's a singular creative vision that just gets more and more off the wall as the movie goes on.  It has more in common with "Being John Malkovich", say, or "Southland Tales" than it does with most other live-action/animation combos.  And if you are familiar with Henry Selick only thanks to "The Nightmare Before Christmas", man, you don't know how crazy his diamond can shine.

I said in an earlier review that Selick is the kind of director who does what he wants and if other people like it, well, good for them for being able to keep up.  "Monkeybone" is apparently based upon a graphic novel, but it appears as though that source material (which, to be fair, I have never encountered, so I don't even know) was merely used as a stepping-off point so Selick's imagination could fly free.  We get to see every kind of animation technique there is and there are several characters who are brought to life using two or three techniques at once.  The characters themselves are often rather grotesque, and a few climbed right out of the Uncanny Valley.  Only a small handful of characters are anywhere near intentionally cute.  There are some impressively random cameos; the live actors in general are a little iffy, and it's genuinely frightening when they get partially-animated.  The live-action sequences are rather cloying and feel like a different movie entirely, but things pick up once a zombie gymnast played by Chris Kattan shows up.

And we all know what movies with zombie gymnasts played by Chris Kattan are like, don't we?

"Monkeybone" is weird as hell, but it is definitely worth a look simply because it's weird as hell.  Look, most of the films we've seen during this marathon look like they were inspired by powerful hallucinogens; this movie is (at least in part) about a powerful hallucinogen.

Next up, our final Random 90's Animated Film might just make you sick.

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Sketch of the Day!

Randimal Andimals:

"Took a lil' NAP where the roots all TWIST!" - Disney Loose End #44: "James and the Giant Peach"

So here's our first loose end from the Disney Animated Canon, just recently available on Netflix. Actually, I'll consider it a good thing that I had to skip this one during the time I was originally watching/reviewing the Canon all those years ago, since "James and the Giant Peach" is a very interesting, all but forgotten film that deserves a bit of elbow room, rather than a quick paragraph-long review. The same could be said of the other three films I'll be reviewing over the next two weeks.

Some years ago, there was considerable debate as to which animated features made by Walt Disney Pictures should be considered "true" Disney films and which ones shouldn't. This was largely spurred by the glut of direct-to-video/DVD Disney sequels, as seen here, but the question is one that seems to have haunted Disney as long as I can remember. There is an Official Official List of films in the Disney Animated Canon, and even so, part of me wonders how much was added and subtracted just so Disney could say they've hit fifty films in all just last winter.

You see, back when I was a kid, if a Disney film contained animation, it was considered an "Animated Disney Animated Classic Animated Entertainment Event What is Animated." Simple enough. So clearly "Fantasia" and "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty" were part of what would in the future be called the Canon, but so were things like "Victory Through Air Power" and "Song of the South" and even "TRON" (speaking of, here are more thoughts on this issue). If you were a movie and you gave Disney a reason to brag about it's animation legacy, you were in, which made a lot of sense back when Disney was hurting for things to brag about with regards to animated films. (To get a sense of what Disney was like in the late 70's through the mid 80's, picture a peacock who is desperately trying to replace his shiny display feathers, even as they are moulting.) As you can see here, when you count every notable Disney feature-length film with animation in it as part of the Canon, we left #50 in the dust years ago (then again, given the movie that gets to be number fifty by my reckoning is the much-derided "Dinosaur"...)

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" in particular has always had a strange and uncomfortable position within the Disney Animated Canon and, indeed, within Disney films period. When the film was initially released, Disney had little idea what to do with it, how to advertise it, and, most importantly (and tellingly) how to make it into a toy or a theme park ride or a Happy Burger King Kid's Club Meal. It took years and years for Disney to figure out how to appease fans of "Nightmare", and while one could argue that they are going way too far in the opposite direction, it's nice to see them doing anything at all with it. By far, the greatest bone thrown to "Nightmare Before Christmas" and it's fans is the appearance of Jack Skellington and company in "Kingdom Hearts" back before that series went off the rails in a way that is, come to mention it, truly impressive. For this reason, I'd have felt remiss if I hadn't included it in the Canon.

And if "Nightmare" counts then, by God! so does it's immediate successor. Which brings us, finally to today's entry in my journey through the Disney animated films I'd missed out on earlier for various reasons and just recently procured copies of (and never you mind how, though mad props to those of you who have supported this project). Ah, "James and the Giant Peach", what a wonderful little oddball in the history of animated films you are. It is very sad to reflect that, while Disney has taken so very long to acknowledge "Nightmare Before Christmas", "James" might as well be completely invisible.

Henry Selick, the director of both "Nightmare" and "James", and also of "Coraline" and the impressively bizarre "Monkeybone", is, God bless him and his beautifully crazy mind, the kind of director who makes whatever Bizzaries and Fantasies he would like to watch and screw you all if you don't like it. Which is why his adaptation of a Roald Dahl storybook lies among the best Dahl-inspired films. And this is because Roald Dahl, may he and his beautifully crazy mind rest in peace, always struck me as the kind of children's book author who wrote what he wanted and never mind if there are any concerned parents who don't like it. (Maurice Sendak is a close soul-brother.) To that end, his characters tend to face the most unthinkable trauma before some kind of magical thing or other whisks them away to their Happily Ever After. And I do mean "unthinkable". Very early on in "James and the Giant Peach", we are told by the sweetly grandfatherly voice of Pete Postlethwaite (and how I miss him!) how our young hero watched on helplessly as his kindly mother and father were eaten by an angry rhinoceros.

Methinks if almost any other children's book author at all had written something like that, it would warrant a passionate 😱 
  
In a Roald Dahl book, getting maimed by an utterly random animal is Monday. Hanging with large invertebrates (here designed by the wonderful Lane Smith) is Tuesday.

The action inside and around the titular giant peach is why we're here and Selick's work in "James" is astonishing and wonderful. All the creatures have great physicality and marvelous little character moments. The same astounding attention to detail present in "Nightmare Before Christmas" is here too. The live-action bookends are a touch awkward... but I *did* just watch "Rock-A-Doodle", so I'm willing to let them slide.

So here we have a lost little gem that, I think, deserves a lot more attention. Next up, speaking of lost movies, we dig a little deeper into the Disney vault. For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Sketch of the Day!