Movie Mastery – Monkeybone (2001)

Hey everyone, welcome to another Movie Mastery, the podcast where we watch the movies that you tell us to, and we... Unfortunately, we have to do that. We're obligated. I wish we didn't. I wish I could just watch movies I want to watch. You might have thought this was our idea or something. It isn't. This was something assigned to us by the National Council of Punishing... Registries. Punishing Registries. Yeah. Yeah. You know. You know how it is. I am your host, John. And that, as always with me, is Jeff. Hello. Yeah, that's me. I'm a that. That over there. That thing in the corner. That thing in the spotlight. Well, I guess I did lose my religion recently and picked up a new one. Ah! Hey! Speaking of, the Church of the Subgenius. Ah, too early to get into that.

There's not much to it. This movie's rife with little tiny references, but nothing major. Speaking of, this movie is Monkeybone. We watched Monkeybone from 2001. I think it's pronounced Monkeybone-A. Oh, really? Is that correct? I don't. I don't think it is. Okay, all right then. I thought it was. Yeah, I'm just gonna shit on anything you say. It's so fun to record with you when you have a migraine. Huh? How about fuck you? I wonder if I just make a loud piercing noise instead. Yeah, that'd be great. Why don't you turn the lights on real big? Have you ever seen the flashlight on my cell phone, you headaches, motherfucker?

Ah, just absolutely being the worst to each other. That's what you've come to expect and enjoy from Movie Mastery. Here I am trying to be nice, trying to give you extra drugs. Here I am trying to get you all drugged up. Yeah, on aspirin. Oh no, I'm a pusher. Oh no, I got drugged up on aspirin. The thing is, I only keep pain meds that I can take in the garage studio because I'm the only one who's usually out here. So I have my naproxen sodium, which is the only one that will not cause my stomach to bleed out into my butt. But I don't think it's strong enough for, it's not pH balanced for a John. No, I take the maximum allowable human dosage of pain meds every time.

Because here's a little fact. Here's a little sneak behind the curtain. My head gets all fucked up a lot. Yeah. Mine used to. Pretty much quitting a job where I was staring at computers for 11 hours a day helped a lot. Thank God we don't do that anymore. Now, as I look here at this recording that we're doing. You don't have to look at that. You can look away. Free your mind. The rest will follow.

So Monkey Bone is a comedy, kind of? Sort of. I feel like it's trying to send some kind of message as well. But there were a ton of 2001 people in here. Oh, yeah. I mean, we got, obviously, Brendan Fraser. Yeah. Super upfront and present. If you had asked me before I watched, this is my first time watching it, I would have said it stars Brendan Fraser and Chris Kattan. Yes. And every single bit of business for, like, trailers, pictures, everything for this, front and center, you see a little monkey, and you see...

Brennan Fraser, Chris Catan. And I was like, all right, these are the two dudes that I'm going to see. And Chris Catan shows up for like the last 10 minutes. Yeah, he has barely any business and no character of his own. It's very unusual that they focus. I guess he was just hot right then. It's weird because I thought for sure I was like, oh, this is going to be this is going to be him as the monkey. And obviously this is going to be like another like we're going to try and get Catan a vehicle. Exactly. Yeah, it's gonna be another night at the Roxbury. But instead, it's John Turturro is the monkey. What a fucking waste of an amazing talent. Are you there? OK, so we get Bridget Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg.

Goldberg, Rose McGowan, Dave Foley, Giancarlo Esposito, Megan Mullally, John Turturro, Bob Odenkirk, and Thomas Hayden Church. Just motherfuckers coming out of the woodwork in this movie, and it's... man. Yeah, it's not great. It's not as bad as other stuff we've watched around this era, but it's really... it's something. I was.

Because I was assuming this was going to be a Chris Catan vehicle, I assumed this would be way worse than it ended up being. But the fact that Catan has very little business and the business he does have is perfect for him. It's fine. Yeah. Like, it's absolutely fine. It works in the movie. Isn't annoying. I was like, oh, great. Honestly, you're one of the highlights of this film. And that is just damning with faint praise. Exactly. Like, he's one of those names where I see him in the cast. It's like when I see Fred Armisen in a cast. I'm like, oh, shit. Someone's going to have a dipshit accent and just slow the movie to a crawl for five minutes. Fuck you, Fred Armisen. I don't care how much everyone likes him.

But that's how I feel when I see Chris Kattan. But here he is perfectly utilized. He is speaking in Brendan Fraser's thought patterns, and he is just there to do physical bits, which is perfect for him. That's all he can do. Yep, it's just physical comedy, and that is what he is here for. Fabulous. So yeah, I mean, before we get into the full spoilers, just...

know that this isn't near as bad as I think a lot of places were like, this is the worst thing ever. It's got, you know, terrible ratings. That being said, it is in no way good. It's not a secret success like Cabin Boy, where when you watch it now, you're like, oh, I love all these actors, though. In this one, you're like, eh. No, Cabin Boy was propped up by the fact that it had all of these great people around something that was shitty. Yes. Whereas this is like, man, you've got all of these great people and none of them are propping it up. And none of them matter. Like, yeah, technically it has Megan Mullally and Bob Odenkirk in it for two scenes each that go nowhere. Oh, yeah.

They're just a ton of names that you know that are not utilized in any way. The Megan Mullally thing feels like a dropped subplot, and we'll get into that on the other side of the break, but it feels entirely like they had a bigger plan for her, and then they just went, nah. Yeah, there's a lot of that in here. All right, you know what? We'll go ahead and play a little music. We are going to come back, and on the other side, we are going to get into the full spoiler review of 2001's Monkeybone.

Hey, y'all. We're back. It's time to talk about a little bit of monkey bone. A little bit of monkey business here. A little monkey bone. You feeling okay? I'm...

I got a real bad headache. How about I take over? You gotta meet me halfway. Fine, this movie starts in a cartoon that is directed pretty much by the director of the movie and animated by an in-house animation team, but looks almost exactly like the output of that guy that makes Camp Laszlo and Rocko's Modern Life and stuff. It's got that vibe to it. And it is a little cartoon about a man who goes to see a psychologist and dreams about a crush he had on his third grade teacher because she had big, flappy, fat arms. And then a monkey comes out that represents his boner.

Yeah. And then it's like a big nightmare. And it just ends with the psychologist pushing him out of his office so we can laugh at him for being a weirdo. Yeah. And that's our introduction. The monkey, of course, represents the artist's id in this case. And why...

You know, he first shows in this series of cartoon that we'll never see any other episodes of. Yeah. But there are supposed to be like six episodes that they have. There are. And all we ever see of the animation again is a commercial for it later in. There's like a whole, it's Monkeybone's world. We're just living in it. Which is like, oh, that's a rough ad. I guess that's the kind of thing you do when you have a fake ad for something. It doesn't need to be good or anything. No, but it's weird because again, I was like, oh, okay. So Monkeybone is supposed to be...

like this dude's fucking Garfield or whatever. I mean, basically like, oh, I'm an artist and I created some fucking thing and that's going to get me a lot of merchandising in a cartoon. Ultimately, this is the same basic premise as about a million. Harold and the Purple Crayon. Yeah, but this is... You name it. The weird thing for me is that it starts with a, hey, when I was a kid, I got a boner looking at arm flaps. Yeah, from old lady arm flaps. And then that made monkey bone. The thing that bothers me about that is it doesn't commit to it.

There's a part where he's like, yeah, my sexual awakening is when I looked at an older lady's flappy arm fat. And that's why today I'm dating Bridget Fonda. And also Rose McGowan, kind of. You're like, no, you should be dating an old lady with flappy arms. Just follow the Ally McBeal example. It'd be funnier. Or, you know, I thought really what I was getting at with this is that it's weird that the entire first episode that we see is just, oh, Monkeybone isn't an actual thing. We're not following a character. We're following the artist.

talking about his character. That's the thing, talking about himself. And that's the kind of thing where I'm like, that pitch never flies. That thing where it's like, yeah, I made a cool cartoon. It's me explaining my sexual hangups to a psychiatrist. Oh yeah, we've already had Dr. Katz. We don't need an additional. And in that, he didn't play the person explaining his hangups. He was the psychiatrist, so we could have a constant stream of guest stars. This sounds embarrassingly self-indulgent. Oh, yeah. You just decided to write a poem about yourself, like an acrostic with the words Brendan. Like, maybe come back when you came up with some characters that aren't you and your hangups. Yeah, it's weird that this would be the example they'd be like, ah, yes, Monkeybone, this is the thing we are selling is this character. I'm like...

Monkeybone is in this for like, in a, you know, three minute cartoon at the beginning, like 20 seconds at the very end. And I'm like, that's weird. That feels like it should not be that way. Yes, exactly. It's especially weird because this is a pitch for a new cartoon, but it's like a guaranteed success.

Like there's people showing up already to pitch a million dollars worth of toys and stuff that they have already developed. Oh yeah. I mean, that's why I was saying it was like a Garfield. I assume this is monkey bone has been a strip that has been around for long enough that they were like, this is a no brainer. Yeah. Here comes the gravy train on this when we have to do it. Even then I'm still like, I don't think anyone showed up to Jim Davis's house with like a truckload full of Garfield merchandise when the Garfield TV show and us acres launched. I'd see more us acres toys floating around. It's a, it feels kind of, it just feels like they were rushing to the point. Like this guy's an instant celebrity. Like I don't, but anyway, his manager, Dave Foley in a very Dave Foley role in that he is willing to debase himself, spike his hair and run around naked.

Oh, yeah. He does not give a fuck. He's deep in that period of his career where he owed a lot of money to, like, an ex-wife or something, and he just would take literally anything and was perfectly fine doing gross nudities. Like, in Postal. And this. And this. But he comes out all frosty-tipped, just making sure everyone knows what year it is. Oh, yeah. 2001. And he's like, yeah, obviously, a network has already ordered six of these bad boys, and that's how we know we're in the money, gentlemen. And I'm like, yeah, that's on a limited series. We got six three-minute cartoons from Cartoon Network. And you're like...

That is nothing. That's zero. That's literally nothing. That's like if you made Lucy the daughter of the devil. No one's... Oh, gosh. Yeah, you're making that... You're rolling in the 12-ounce mouse money now, aren't you?

Time to get all that ready. Folks, I want you to know, they said yes to six episodes of Assy McGee. Let's see the toys. Let's get a whole truck full of merchandise ready. The reason I keep bringing up the Cartoon Network stuff is because one of the historical footnotes of this movie was it was advertised heavily on Cartoon Network because it has kind of a cartoon slant to it. But a bunch of mothers against momming or whatever got mad. Mothers against momming. They hate it. They just got a shitload of parent complaints that were like, you're showing inappropriate commercials for this dumb movie all over our beloved children's programming. And Cartoon Network responded by making adults swim.

So this led to the founding of Adult Swim, and the HBO Max merger is going to lead to its death. Aw. But it was an interesting time. Our animator is, of course, Brent Fraser, who is playing Stuart Miley. Stuart Miley. You know, S. Miley. Do you get it? Although no one will call him Smiley, which I was like, oh, you'd think someone would call him Smiley at some point. I think this is based on a book. Maybe that happens then. Maybe. I mean, yes, this is based on like a graphic novel thing. Yeah. So he's playing Stu Miley, a reclusive artist who hates fame and famous and Hollywood hanger-ons and just wants to be left alone. Well, yeah, he's got his girlfriend, Julie, the...

Bridget Fonda, and the whole thing for him in this relationship is like, oh, I used to be... like, super fucked up, I had terrible nightmares all the time, like, I couldn't do anything, and I was still an artist, but all my art was ridiculously fucked up and creepy. Yes, it was all those nightmares and stuff. Bridget Fonda, Julie, plays the sleep doctor that he went to go see, and apparently, apparently, what cures him is, hey, have you tried drawing with your other hand? And that's, I guess, cures him. So the whole deal is that he's right-handed, and when he draws right-handed, he makes basically fantasy art of terrifying nightmare sequences, but it's all super high, hyper-realistic looking and very pretty. When he draws left-handed, he draws...

fucking Rocco's modern life and everyone loves it. So with his left hand, he has managed to create this world. I think it's interesting that after creating the monkey bone characters in the world, he has to keep drawing left-handed to create them. He can't just ape that style with his right hand later. No, because for some reason, this has a big thing where it's like, oh, he's two things in his own body. There's stew and monkey bone and those are the two parts. So the left part of him is making monkey bone and the right part is his neurotic stew part. Yeah, or the id and the ego or whatever. But it's, like I was saying, it's all just Church of the Subgenius references. So look that shit up because I am not going to explain it. It's fucking irritating.

So, yeah, he does not want to be part of this. He's at some industry party for the announcement of the fact that his cartoon's been picked up. And Foley keeps trying to force him to talk to various, like, executives from different agencies that are probably capitalized on this. He's like, oh, we've got deals with this toy company. We've got deals with this fast food restaurant. Like, we've got all these things that we could push to, you know, get more merchandising stuff. And he's like, I don't care about money or merchandise. I am a true artist. And all I care about is my art and my girlfriend who saved my life. I was going to say, I would be weird if he ever actually mentioned his art. He doesn't give a shit about that either. He is purposely...

exclusively driven by Bridget Fonda in this movie and has no other known interests. Yeah, pretty much. All he ever says is like, I want to be alone in a room with my girlfriend. He's like episode nine Finn, where all he ever says is Ray. And you're like, what's your, what's your deal? What do you want to do? Ray. Okay. Ray is currently looking at you. What do you have to say to her? Ray. I have to tell you something. Ray. Did you turn into a Pokemon? So, um, so anyway, uh, do you mean any Ray? I don't, I'm not Finn. Oh, okay. In episode nine. Um, so he wants to escape this party and he convinces, uh, Bridget Fonda's character.

Julie, Julie, to escape through a back door with him that is one way. And he's like, see, the thing about this door is once you go through it, you can't go back through it. Come with me. We'll go back to our place. And I'll just, I guess, dote on you because I don't seem to have any interests that aren't you. He's lucky that everyone he meets in the rest of this movie is extremely sympathetic to how boring that is. Yeah. Just to convince death to let him get back up to earth because he's just like, I like my girlfriend. And she's like, well, that's a good cause. Oh, fine. Sure. No, you're the first person in history that's ever told me they liked their girlfriend. I just, the thing is, this movie is.

barely over an hour. Like, it is an hour 15. Yeah. And it does not have any time to develop anything. Yeah. So it was like, what is Stu? Stu likes his girlfriend. What else? Baby, that's all we got time for. What do you mean, what else? What else could you possibly need to hang a movie on beyond a man likes his girlfriend? This is 100% wife guy material before he is married.

It's funny because, I mean, obviously this is a movie about how he gets knocked into a coma and goes, I guess it's not obvious. He goes outside, gets in the car with his girlfriend, Foley's bothering him, there's another truck full of merchandise. His whole plan is, I want to get home because I'm going to propose to my girlfriend. Like, tonight is the night he is going to give his grandma's ring to Julie and be like, I want you to marry me. And she knows. That's an important thing for the plot way later. No, she doesn't. Not right now. No, but she knows about the ring. Yeah, after she gets told about it later. Oh, someone else. Okay, someone else tells her about it later. Alright, that's fair. Yeah, so he wants to raise someone to propose, yes. Yeah, so he's like, alright, I need to get the fuck out of here because...

You know, even more than just, I really like my girlfriend. He's like, I have this whole fucking thing planned for tonight. Like an idiot. I decided I was going to do this on launch night of my, like, preview night of my fucking cartoon when everyone is going to want a piece of me. There are only two things in this entire dude's story arc and world. And he's like, I can just do them both at once. What the fuck ever. Do them the next night, buddy. What else do you possibly have going on? Yeah. Oh, I was going to spend the next night pining over my girlfriend. Oh, okay. So yeah, he gets a bunch of crap shoved into his very tiny car. He has an old Datsun. And then it gets, um...

It turns out there's a giant inflatable monkey bone in the car. Yeah, because he's trying to see out the back because he's trying to back out of this lot. Yes. So he's like slapping all the merchandise and crap that's covering up his back window. And as he does so, he manages to activate the gigantic self-inflating monkey bone. I guess it was designed to be like for aircraft escape or something. Why the fuck is it auto-inflating? That's really expensive and complicated when you just have that thing for fucking car dealerships and shit where they can just put it on a fan. Oh, yeah. I'm like, wait a minute, why would you...

Why would this be a thing that would even be a merchandising thing? No one has one of these. Hey, we need you to approve the 40-foot-high monkey bone inflatable balloon that fills itself up automatically with helium that I guess it distills from the atmosphere as it goes. Yes, it is full of helium. It does fly. Well, we don't know if that one does. It's the same one. That's the whole reason they show it then. Maybe they do change out the gas in it for a different gas later. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that this one is full of helium. The one at the event might be later on.

Maybe they recalled this one because it automatically inflated. They're like, let's just do a helium one. Yeah, let's just self-fill that one up. Why are we doing a helium one? It's not meant to fly. It's tied to a building. We can fill it up. The whole point is it's like one of those fucking dealership monkeys. Why is it full of helium? It's as stupid as the first one. Don't worry about it. All our products have to be at least this stupid to ride. But yes, it begins filling up the entire car and hits the gas so that he cannot break or stop the car for some reason. He is in reverse. And so they slam backwards and he gets quite injured, but Julie is fine. Yeah, they go driving through traffic and slam into a wall and he ends up in a coma, but Julie is fine. Yes.

So we now go to a hospital. I don't know. Whatever, I'm going to the hospital. We go to the hospital where he is lying there in a coma and talking to a doctor. And there's one other character there. That's his older sister, played by Megan Mullally. And her entire character arc is that her and him share the experience of their mom lingering for a long time before dying. And so the two of them have agreed to a pull-the-plug pact. They were like, it took forever for, I think it was their dad, but whatever, their parent to die. And they're like, we watched them.

linger on for so long. And we both went, we don't want that for either of the other of us. If we're ever in a situation like this and it doesn't seem like there's any hope, just pull the plug. So here's the thing about the Megan Mullally character. That's a very noble goal, right? Like the two of them have a shared experience of grieving and a difficult death. And so they decide to have a DNR pact between them. But that's not how the movie plays it. The movie plays it like she can't wait to get to the apricot orchards that father left to him. Exactly. Every time we see...

His sister, she's like, oh, well, you know, she'll give a speech of like, well, you know, we don't want the same thing that happened to our parents to happen to each other. And this is exactly what we wanted. And so we're going to do that. And yes, finally, I can't wait. Only two more weeks. And you're like, why are you oddly villainous about this? There's a part where she asked the doctor for a ballpark on how long he has left. And then when he's like, I don't really have an answer, she like checks her watch and taps it to be like any second now, though, right? Like we could just kill him now, right? And he's like, no, usually it takes three months for irreversible brain damage to set in. And she's like, fine, I guess I can wait.

three months. Oh, yeah. Literally, her whole character arc is like, I want this guy dead. But it's not for like, it never seems like it's played for noble or sympathetic reasons. Well, we never get a point where you would, if you were playing it for like, oh, she's the villain, you'd think it would be, oh, because they aren't married yet, are Stu and Julie. Yes. So like, oh, she's going to inherit all of the money that he has for Monkeybone. Like, she's going to be in charge of that property. And so she's doing this to get something. But there is never a point where like, anyone says that.

or it's even implied, it just seems like she wants her brother to be dead. Yes, and there's no resolution to this. The resolution of the Megan Mullally character arc is that later on, when Brendan Fraser's body wakes up and starts running around, she faints in surprise and disappears from the movie in a faint. We never see her again. Yeah, she's just like, oh, well, all right, bye. I guess that was me. I did my part. That's a wrap on Megan Mullally. Thank you. And we're all like, but didn't she have sinister motives or something? I thought for sure it was going to be like, oh, she's going to try and get him back into a coma or donk him on the head or do something. No, absolutely disappears. There's even a part where Julie's character is there.

talking to him in the hospital, and I guess it's been the three months, and then Megan Mullally shows up from behind her and talks to her through an open window that separates... Because she's smoking outside. Oh, yeah, except that she appears to be in a hallway. But sure, she's smoking outside, so she talks to Julie through an open window and is like, oh, hey, just so you know, it's been three months, so I gave the order to buy! And she, like, runs away. They're gonna pull the plug tomorrow, bye! You're like, okay, that is definitely sinister intent. What the fuck? Like, it feels so much like a dropped plot. Yes.

Like there was originally going to be that she was after the monkey bone money and they just were like, I don't have time for that. Look, we have an hour of movie and 15 minutes to play with and you are not in our 15 minutes. Brendan Fraser plays the hero and the villain. No room for extra villains. Get the fuck out of here. Ugh.

But when he is in a coma, he ends up going, you know, down into a wonderful magical world where he takes a little rollercoaster ride to downtown. Because, you know, he's down. You see, downtown. It's not just downtown, he's down. Because he's in a coma, so he's downtown. So downtown is a place where everyone with comas is. If you're in a coma, your mind is downtown. Yeah, but it's also where Hypnos lives, and he is in this just the god of nightmares. And is like, boy, howdy, I fucking love nightmares. But this is, Stu ends up being like, all right, well, I guess I...

As I just hang out here. Yeah, as far as I can tell, downtown is just a land of weird shit and don't worry about it and don't ask questions. It's a real dream town. Yeah. So, of course...

for some reason the town itself is made like a carnival so there's like attractions and rides and people selling you know various hot dogs and whatnot and it's made to just look very you know fun fantasy carnival nonsense and then there's a movie theater that just shows nightmares from people yeah that's hypnosis house it also there's just like gods there like a couple of them that are hypnosis the only major one but there's like references to other gods just being around death comes through from time to time the two of them are brother and sister uh the other problem i ran into with this is that the downtown set seems to be extremely based on art that we see in stew's house like we see his dream journal where we established that he was afraid of like minotaurs and he was afraid of cyclopses based on like childhood reading and there's minotaurs and cyclopses there just to be like hey remember me i was one of your nightmares yeah but like see that's the thing is when he first gets down there i was like oh this is just his mind yes like this is stew's own personal fucking coma hell that he is in and i was getting at yeah and i thought oh okay they're showing his nightmares because everyone there was like oh stew wiley i love your fucking nightmares i've seen every one of them and you know he's like a little celebrity down there so i thought oh okay this is all his brain

But then immediately it's like, no, there are other Koma people here, and like, a Grim Reaper shows up to go get one later. Everyone who is in a Koma is here, and I guess they all just live among Stu Miley's nightmare creatures, whether they're things from the movies that you watch as the movies, or things from his brain that I guess just came to life, that independence of the process by which his nightmares become movies, just don't worry about it, it's just both. No, see, this is the land of nightmares, and so... all of the things that he was drawing and having nightmares about came from here. It came first. Except that he is routinely referred to as the creator of Monkeybone, even down here. And here's Monkeybone serving as like the local entertainment in the bar run by the Picasso-drawn bull monster. Oh, yeah. So it's just whatever. It's just fucking whatever.

That's what's in downtown. If the director had an interesting idea or a semi-interesting idea for a stop motion or crazy costume thing, he put it in there and don't fucking ask questions because he won't like the answers. Like, whose nightmare was a sexy Rose McGowan cat girl? Yeah, it's weird that they were like, ah, yes, this is the land of nightmares. Anyway, here's a sexy cat girl with like an onk on her head. Who had Rose McGowan as a cat girl as a nightmare? I don't know. I can't remember. Who did she replace on Charmed? Maybe her. Like...

The thing with this is a lot like what you were saying is so much of this feels like, oh, I had this cool idea. And it's not like the visuals for downtown are bad. It looks super neat. It's super surrealist and like doing like puppetry versions of Harryhausen looking things. It's Henry Selick directing and he directed like James on the Giant Peach, Coraline. The dude fucking loves stop motion. Oh yeah. And I mean, a lot of it is designs that you would find from like other things. You've got some Tim Burton styling things in there. Magnus Carlson. Yeah, that's the animation style. Yes. Yeah.

And so when you look at it, you're like, oh, this is very interesting visually. And then it doesn't do anything. It doesn't go anywhere. It also does that thing that you always see in movies where there's a lot of people wearing like big animatronic puppet masks and so on, where they, I guess, realize that their faces aren't especially expressive. So in every scene, they're all just wobbling every part of themselves constantly. So every time you pan across, you're like, oh, there's that same cow lady there was before in the Cyclops Monster, a little rat man and so on. And every one of them is just kind of doing some vague all the time, every part of their body. Everybody's got to wiggle around. And you're just like, this is so fucking visually the story. I hate this. It's like I'm watching an hour and 15 minute music video.

it's it's so weird yeah that even here again there's no real idea of what's like cohesively going on because like you said when he gets in there like he runs around there's a whole bunch of freaking shit he gets freaked out a little bit yeah he finally goes into a bar but the bar has monkey bone performing there and i'm like okay i can go ahead and buy that monkey bone is here because he's part of stew's brain like he brought him with him yeah but the fact that he did not appear with him when he went down like he got on the roller coaster and got off by himself and then he's just like oh monkey bone is here like so is this the We find out that he is a figment and he wants his own body, but I'm like, are figments nightmares? John, it's fucking whatever.

God damn it. No, I kept trying to find some kind of through line in here, just a rope to grab onto to be like, do you have any idea about what the fuck you were doing? We do not, sir. They have a fucking, like, stop motion Ahura Mazda show up at one point just to give him a letter. Yeah. I mean, the pianist that is playing for him is basically Ganesh. Yeah. Oh, that's right. The three-armed elephant pianist who also shows up in other scenes just to sort of flail vibrantly around because they built that costume and by God, they're going to use it for crowd shots. Oh, fuck yeah. If you built...

a big weird costume. Obviously, that's going to be in all of your shots here. The other thing, okay, so John Turturro is voicing Monkeybone, which is great, because John Turturro rules. Now, he is just doing this character as a high-pitched, weak voice, so it's not interesting. The other problem is, if this guy is a figment of, like, the best parts of Brendan Fraser's, like, imagination, and he had, like, his forwardness and so on, I fucking hate Stu Miley, because the first thing that Monkeybone does when he comes out, he's like, hey, everybody, what if I did the happy birthday Mr. President routine in a Marilyn Monroe dress with big fake boobies, and then I turned into a fucking Frank Sinatra, and I'm like, then you'd be a boring fucking boomer. You got anything else you want to recite a La Casablanca, you fucking hack? It is...

Monkeybone is a character in this movie that I hate in not the way that I think they wanted you to hate him. Because he's supposed to be like, oh, he's supposed to be an irascible little guy. And he'll, oh, he just can't keep it in his pants. And he's a fucking troublemaker. But I'm like, no, he's mostly just annoying and shitty. Yeah.

He's not funny. He's not interesting. You failed the entire movie to see the appeal of this character. Oh, yeah. The fact that we start the movie where everyone's like, fuck yeah, everyone's super into this fucking monkey bone. I'm like, really? Because he sucks. He hasn't said word one that is remotely amusing to me. This movie should have been out the pitch process for Family Guy, where they're like, I invented this monkey character. What can he do? I can just quote famous people from the 50s. He just does that. And also, he hates it when he touches tail. He goes like, ah, don't touch my tail. And, you know, if he's hungry, he'll be like, I'm a monkey, so I probably want a banana. And you're like, that sounds awful. Like, do you have any? Is there anything interesting about him?

Well, he represents my id. So in the first cartoon, it'll all just be about me and how interesting I am. Yeah. Really, what you're buying here is me and Monkeybone is just part of it. I'm like, wait a minute. Is this actually the Todd McFarlane storyline? Not Todd. Which one's the one? Is that the right one? Which McFarlane is the toy one and which one's the family guy one? Seth McFarlane. Seth McFarlane. Thank you. Okay.

One of them's Toys and Spawn, and the other one's Family Guy. What the fuck does this have to do with Spawn? I mean, I'll allow it, but I want to see where you're going with this. Well, think about it. Spawn does head to meet some representation of death and some representation of an afterlife, and then later he gets sent back up onto Earth to complete missions at the behest of that underworld figure. If anything, this is basically Seth MacFarlane doing Spawn. I mean, if anything. This is just Spawn. 100% just Spawn. Yeah, he loves his girlfriend. He wants to come back for her. Yeah, he comes back up, and he's just like, Wanda! Like a thousand times. I mean, Julie! Don't you, like, have any other thoughts? Wanda! Step out of my way, because I've got to get to Wanda!

Anyway, monkey bones down there and it's fucking irritating. And this is a point where we've already talked about this. This movie feels like it was cut viciously to get to an hour and 15. Oh yeah. Cause we just immediately, we get the scene where it's like, ah, three months and then we'll pull the plug. And then it just cuts to him still in there. And he's like, Hey buddy, you want another comatini? No, I am sick of martinis for I have been here for six weeks. And you're like, wow, way to exposition my man. Especially because they were like, all right, uh, scene one, the scene where he finds out he's in a coma land. Uh, that's a wrap cut.

No one move? Okay, scene two. It's six weeks later and everyone is wearing the same outfits, standing in the same positions and doing the same things. Go. Yeah. Do you want to put like a six months later chyron on there or something so we can set up a gag? Anything at all. Like a gag that nothing has changed in six months? No. Why would we do a gag? Have you seen what movie this is?

But yeah, it's just, ah, we ended with sitting at the bar, and here I am in the same seat at the bar. All right, sure. Meanwhile, Rose McGowan's character Kitty, an imaginary or nightmare cat girl or something wearing a keep house style dress so you can ogle her boobs, because it slipped down the middle, like literally the movie stops on several occasions to ogle her boobs, has developed kind of a crush on Brendan Fraser, I assume just because the only thing he ever says is that he's taken and he wants to see his girlfriend and he likes his girlfriend, and she's like, ooh, a taken guy. Oh, yeah. I mean, like I said, he is a small celebrity down here because he's apparently got fucked up nightmares, and they love that shit down here. Yeah.

And then he's probably, I guess she's like, Oh, you're like the only nice guy I ever met. I'm like, really? Cause you got a bunch of random coma people down here that don't seem to be. doing much of anything but hanging out and being decent. I mean, the rest of them seem to have kind of, I feel like he'd be like the least interesting person to hang out with down there because he is obsessed with getting out of the coma while the rest of them seem to be perfectly fine with it. I mean, we never see another person in this movie be like, I hate that I'm in a coma. I love my husband so much. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, he doesn't even do anything. He just kind of sits in there until he realizes that you can get out because it takes all of this time and then a Grim Reaper shows up and is like, hey, fucking Ed Bagler or whatever his name is. Ed Bagler Jr. You gotta come with me. And, you know.

He just grabs this dude and has an exit pass and like, oh, this guy's going to go back up. And that's when Brendan Fraser's like, wait a minute, that's a fucking option? You can leave? And why does this guy get to leave? He's like 80, fuck this guy. Yeah, he gets mad at the Grim Reaper, who he assumes his death.

It's not. It's one of Death's employees. Yeah, it's just O-Reaper. O-Reaper. But this dude gets set on one of those carnival test-your-strength catapult, hit the thing with the hammer machines, and gets knocked up into the sky into the head of an animatronic Abraham Lincoln, which opens his mouth to receive him. Yeah. And Monkeybone points it out for us, like, see, it's Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator. You gotta go through that to leave here. Do you get it? Huh? Come on! If you don't, it's because it's a Church of the Subgenius fucking thing. Hey, do you have a question about what that head used to be before Abraham Lincoln when people were in comas? Fucking don't! Don't have that question!

So now Brendan Fraser is obsessed with specifically this. He's like, how come that 80-year-old man got an exit pass and I don't? This sucks. It's unfair. He throws an apple at the Reaper's head, but it doesn't fucking do anything. The Reaper doesn't give a shit. No. And he's like, come on, man. Give me one of them exit passes. He's like, sorry. On break. Bye. It just fucks off. Yeah. And that's when he gets delivered by a stop-motion Ahura Mazda bicycle-looking monster. Shows up and is like, oh, and says in an offensively Indian accent. Yeah. He straight up has the Apu. He's just like, hey, here's a message for you. Okay, bye. I'm not going to do that voice. Yeah, no.

And the message is just like, you were invited to a pajama party at Hypnosis House. And he goes in pajamas. And you know who isn't in pajamas, though? Anyone else. Not a single other person. Because everyone else there is just every extra with a costume from town. The fact that he got in, I was like, ooh, a special invitation. But then he gets there and it's just like, it's everyone that's there. It doesn't matter. And all the other Koma people are just dressed like they usually were. He's the only one who, I guess, knew where to find pajamas in Koma Land. It came with pajamas and the invitation. I guess no one else got sent those. Yeah, he got sent special pajamas.

Everyone else has already been to one of these. They've been in a coma long enough, and they're like, yeah, it's a gag. You can always tell the first timers because they're in the fucking pajamas. Yeah, and so that's his big thing. He gets this invitation to go to Hypnosis House to hang out for a pajama party. It turns out Hypnosis House really is more like a movie theater for watching nightmares in. He has like a crystal ball that comes up out of the floor and everyone stands around it to gawk at interesting nightmares. Yeah. So that's what's going to happen there. I don't know if we want to go back up top for a little while, though. Well, I mean, the only thing that really happens up top is that scene that we already mentioned about Mulally being like, I'm going to pull the plug. That's true. Yeah, it's not until...

Not until the movie's big turn that we really have to deal with up top for a while. So yeah, he goes, even though the movie goes back and forth, there's a whole thing happening right now where up top, Julie, who is like a sleep researcher, has apparently invented a fluid that you can inject into people to automatically give them nightmares. Yeah, they're like, oh, we distilled down some chemical that makes you have these specific brain patterns that are associated with nightmares. Yes, and as a result, she's planning to shoot him up with a bunch of it and try and scare him awake. Yeah, because she's got a couple sleep doctor assistants and they're like, oh shit, look, here's the worst.

nightmare we ever had on record for him when we were doing the sleep studies back in the day and here's what he looks like right now and he's like oh it's worse than what he was and it's continuous like he is trapped in a nightmare and everyone that was one of the assistants was like oh you want to try and lower the amount of this brain chemical to make him stop having nightmares and she's like no fuck that shit I'm gonna jam his ass full of it yeah we're gonna fucking scare his ass awake is her plan uh so now we're down to the hypnosis pajama party and sure enough here comes hypnosis on like a descending circular bed from the ceiling where I guess he's been sleeping with like a bee monster yeah and uh basically he's excited to meet Brendan Because, or Stu, because he's, you know, famous for his cool nightmares. And he tells Stu, hey, by the way, if you want one of those exit passes, the only way you can get one is to sneak it up and steal one from death right out from under her nose. Yep, that's right. If you want to get out of here, you're going to have to get to death's realm and steal one. But you didn't hear that from me. Very under the radar. And to drive home the necessity of this, the nightmare that is playing on the globe is Julie's nightmare. Because she's having a dream about, like, being on a wedding cake with Stu and everything's great. And then, oh no, now he's going to die. And there's just...

like a nightmare of them cutting a cord and him deflating, and that was a very cool special effect, the deflating Brendan Fraser. It was very cool. That's also because we've skipped over the scene where she finds out that he was going to propose. We mentioned that way earlier, so it's fine. So anyway, now he sneaks into Death's house, which takes the form of him riding an interesting train. Yeah, he's back on the fucking rollercoaster ride. Yeah, he gets on the rollercoaster ride, because I guess when the first time he got off it, it said, next stop, death. And he immediately was like, am I dead? And it was like, no, man, next stop's death. You just heard the fucking train. Oh, man, you're downtown. But this time he rides it down to Death's house. I'm still, I'm in a loss, other than because the movie needed to happen. Why the fuck? Why the actual fuck did he take Monkey Bone with him?

I mean, I assume Monkeybone just went. I assume he volunteered. But I was just like, I'm going with you. I'm not taking you with me. You have never in the entire history of mine knowing you shut the fuck up for even a second. Yeah. You have never done anything but be awful. Yeah. All you do is chatter. I don't want you in my costume. That's dumb as hell. Yeah, I'm going to stealth steal a thing. I do not want the world's loudest asshole with me. I mean, you can come with me if I can throw you in there before I go in as a distraction. But no, he goes in there. He rips the like weird white cloak thing because the Reapers look interesting. They've got an interesting thing where they're like, oh, we look like a weird white.

like paper mache type thing with a cool aesthetic like flat back head and yeah uh like red blood red hands and i'm like oh this is this looks cool yeah they look like mummies but with aqualine rocketeer helmet heads and a crack up the front center that red glows out of they look super cool yeah that's a very cool design yeah but he rips the little like covering off of a guy and it's just like a ghost that dissipates so now they've got a cloak they can wear turns out they're full of ghost unfortunately their cloak i don't even see how this happens gets a bunch of green shit on it yeah again feels like there was a scene missing here because when they show up they're like Oh, okay. We cut to death's office, which is Whoopi Goldberg is death and Thomas Hayden Church is her assistant. A fucking clown for some reason. And he like... I guess he's Pagliacci. Yeah. But doctor. But doctor, I am Thomas Hayden Church. Please take my name off the credits.

But yeah, he shows up in, you know, the robe that he stole. But for some reason, there is a giant green splotch on the side of it. Never explained. No idea why. It's crazy. It's instrumental. It's how he gets caught. Yeah, but then Whoopi's like, hey, you come over here. What the fuck? Why do you have what looks like pea soup on the side of your robe? And I really wanted Fraser at that point as Miley to be like, I don't fucking know. That wasn't there in the last scene. What the fuck? Henry, why the fuck is there green shit on the costume? We cut that. It was part of this up plot with Megan Mullally wanting your fortune. It's some kind of weird thing. I think.

I don't know. Probably Monkeybone did something earlier. I don't know. Monkeybone takes liquidy green shits. I'd say pee, but we make a major plot point establishing that he has no penis. It's true. Although at the end of the movie, he has to go to the bathroom really bad. He's like, can I be excused? I have to go to the bathroom really bad. I'm like, what are you going to do? Does it come out of your ears like a sponge? What are you doing? Mouth, I guess.

But yeah, anyway, Monkeybone, of course, is just fucking loud and irritating and gets them caught. Also, the big green splotch on him gets them caught. Yeah. But they manage to just grab an exit pass and run. Yeah. Because there's a bit where, like, they're just waiting in line with a bunch of other Reapers until Hayden Church has to be like, oh, this one guy gets an exit pass. Oh, goddammit, you know, that leads to so much extra paperwork and shit for me and blah, blah, blah. And you don't like it and I don't like it. And Whoopi Goldberg is like, shut up, just give me the fucking pass. And then they steal it. Yeah. And they run out. And of course, there's a big chase scene where, like, some Reapers come after them.

But mostly he's just like, no, I just got onto the train to downtown and it didn't really matter all that much. Then Reaper manages to get Monkeybone. Kinda, yeah. What happens is this is the exact moment as they're making their escape that he gets shot up with ten times the recommended dosage of nightmare juice. And this causes a giant painting, one of his own paintings, to appear in front of the train tracks back up to downtown from Death's house. And he gets stuck and then kind of melts into it. Yeah, he gets stuck into a ridiculous, terrible nightmare. Yeah, and then Monkeybone just carves him out of there with a stolen scythe. Yeah, because one of the Reapers grabbed a Monkeybone and just sort of fucked off with him. And so he comes back and it's just like, oh, he got rid of the Reaper. He has that guy's scythe now. Yeah, and then they steal that same Reaper's goofy flying...

stop motion bicycle machine to get past what is now like the weird nightmare painting that's on the track so they can't take the train so he has to take a flying bicycle back to downtown I find it amusing I mean I know what you're gonna say because I said it to you earlier that when he gets shot out full of nightmare juice that all it does is create a big painting to block the train tracks he needs to get home it does literally nothing else at any point you may wonder why that happens and I'll tell you it's because it's what the fuck ever because who gives a shit I thought for sure that it was like oh man like The painting is there because he's trying to get back to Nightmare Land and that's like, oh, Nightmare Land's fucked right now. Yeah. And so I thought, oh, he's going to get on the thing and then fly over that. But when he gets to downtown, downtown is going to be fucked. But no, he gets there and it's just normal. It's normal. They ride up there on a flying bike instead of the train. The only thing that Nightmare Juice did in the storyline at all until the very end of the movie is put a big painting in the way of the train tracks. Yeah. And so he's like, all right, great. I'm going to get out of here. And then Monkey Bone hits him with a wrench and is like, ha ha, no. And apparently everyone in downtown is in on it. And they're like, yeah, go Monkey Bone. You're going to steal this guy's body.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because Monkeybone, we find out he, well, we'll find out in a couple of scenes. Right now, Monkeybone just hits him with a wrench and escapes. Yeah. Now, up top, while this is happening, it is just about 9 a.m., and that is when they are pulling the plug. And of course, Mulally is up there, like, looking at her watch and being like, all right, come on, let's go. And when it hits 9, she, like, elbows the doctor and is like, come on. Let's do this. Kill this guy. I definitely have ulterior motives that we've cut out of the movie. But yeah, right as they're about to hit the switch to turn off all the life support, he sits bolt upright.

And now Monkeybone is in his body. Which is weird, because he was already in his body. That was the whole point of him, but whatever. Now he's the only thing in his body. Yeah, now he's in control of the body. This starts a point in the movie that bothered the fuck out of me, but did not affect John very much, which is, as soon as Monkeybone gets in his body, the rest of the sequence with him, which pretty much rest of the movie being in Brendan Fraser's body, is marked by...

very, very on-the-nose soundtrack needle drops. I mean, we've had those before, too. We had one in Squirrel Nut Zippers Hell in the scene when he goes to Death's Domain. Yes, that is true. When they ride down to Death's Domain, it immediately starts up with that, and you're like, oh, listen to that. Oh, goodness. You can tell now this movie was made between 1997 and 2002, because they're playing swing revival music. Hell yeah, buddy. But from this point, Monkeybone, the very first thing he does is check to see if he has a penis. He's very excited to learn that he does. He goes home with Julie, but doesn't like her, and is just sort of...

screechy and acting like a monkey and not trying to keep his cover in the slightest. There's a great scene where he eats cake that she made for him and it's just like fucking all over his face and hands and shit. Well, yeah, because it's like, ah, here's a welcome back cake and he just grabs a handful of cake. The reason I think it's a great scene is because they make a big point of him just being completely slathered in fucking cake everywhere. Then the dog scares him. He jumps up onto the mantle of his fireplace and no longer has any cake on him. I guess he just jumped out of the cake. Yeah, the dog scared the cake off him.

Of course, Buster is his dog, and dogs know when an evil monkey is inhabiting your body. They can tell when you're just your id and not your id and your ego and your superego. The dog can smell which aspect of Freudian psychology is currently solely inhabiting your brain space. Now, of course, while he was asleep for three months, he had grown a little beard, and then he shaved all of it off except for tiny little mutton chops and a soul patch so you could tell he was evil. And you could also tell what year it was, because mutton chops and a soul patch were the mark of being evil for like 18 months at the turn of the millennium.

It might have lasted longer, but I feel like there was a major event towards the end of 2001 that caused a lot of 2001 friends to instantly die. And that, of course, was the film Monkeybone. Of course. And, of course, in this Monkeybone... as Jeff said, makes no, like, at all, like, means or tries to hide that he is just a fucking monkey. And you would think a doctor who specializes in, like, sleep and problems with, you know, having anything like that, when you come out of a coma, it's like, oh, he immediately began acting like a different person. You'd be like, oh, well, let's take him in to study him. She doesn't want to. Other people keep telling her to. There's more than one scene in this movie of people being like, he's acting really weird. He's all fucked up. She should be in, like, I don't know, some kind of hospital. And she's like, no, because my boyfriend's home. He really likes me. Well, at least he used to. Now he keeps laughing at me when I mentioned that we were planning to get married.

And also jumping up on tables and shit. Yeah, like there's a scene where she's like, hey, by the way, I found out about the thing you were going to ask me the night of the accident. And the answer is yes. And he's like, what the fuck are you talking about? And she's like, we were going to get married. He just fucking laughs at her. He's like, ha, he actually did it. I'm not going to fucking marry you. What the hell is, no. I mean, he doesn't say that. Yeah, instead he just leads her on for a long time. He's just like, yeah, I'll ask you again when I'm ready to. And he just never does. I mean, he does. That's the end of the movie. That's right. There is a point towards the end of the movie where he does in the worst way possible. Instead, he gets horny when he realizes that there's like a female in the house. There's a, there's a.

diverging scene where he sees her look through a shower like yeah we cut back and forth camera to like him leering at the edge of a bed and then ooh it's the silhouette of her taking a shower but then when we actually you know we cut back a few times but then when we see what he's looking at he's just watching you know a nature show with monkeys fucking yeah he's like ooh then we get the the needle drop thing that this is the point where i started getting irritated because i like squirrel nut zippers enough for that to override it yeah but then in this scene they play sexual healing as he's like hey we should have sex and she's like oh okay let's go have sex if you think you're healthy enough so they start playing sexual healing like all right that's very on the nose fine whatever then he gets her in the bed he's like you're so sexy and then foxy lady starts playing as well like one song stops the other one starts you're just like jesus fuck give this shit back to wayne's world you didn't earn this quit playing ever you're gonna keep playing songs about sex you want to play buck cherry's crazy bitch next what else you got Oh, he never actually has sex with her. He does a bunch of goofy monkey shit and then just fucking falls asleep nestled in her cleavage. Yeah, he spins around the bed a bunch of times and then falls on it and bangs his head. Yeah. Now, in downtown, the...

Stu is imprisoned because he is now with a group of people that we learn Hypnos has done this to before, where he has convinced people to go grab exit passes from death in order for their figments to take over their body. And he's like, oh, I did this so that they would go back up and create nightmares. So, you know, we meet, first off, we meet Stephen King. And you're like, okay, that makes sense. Like, Stephen King had his figment of his imagination, Cujo, took over his body, and now he writes a bunch of scary books to give people nightmares.

Totally understandable. Yeah, that one makes perfect sense. Edgar Allan Poe had a raven. That was his figment, took over his body, wrote a bunch of horror stuff to give people nightmares. Perfect sense. Lizzie Borden. Lizzie Borden's a weird one. I feel like they just couldn't think of any women who have written inspirational... You'd think they would go with Mary Shelley. I mean, here's the thing. The other ones make some sense because you're like, oh, Jack the Ripper's in there. Okay, he inspired a shitload of terror. I get it. I understand it. Attila the Hun. Sure. Again, I get it. Typhoid Mary. All right, sure. Kinda, yeah. Maybe.

Society at the time mostly just thought Typhoid Mary was a fucking asshole. They didn't think she was like the scariest person in history. Yeah, but at least you're like, oh, she's giving nightmares about disease, I guess. But Lizzie Borden's like, dude, you killed your parents. Yeah, that's like being fucking terrified of the Menendez brothers. How many horrifying nightmares did Lizzie Borden inspire, right?

Yeah, so anyway, he finds out that this is all part of Hypnos' plan to make more nightmares, because he's like, that's our whole deal here. We love nightmares, and it's the only thing keeping us going. I kind of wonder when that started and why. Like, isn't Hypnos just the god of dreams? Why does he give a shit about specifically nightmares? Well, because in this, he is the god of nightmares. Oh, okay. He's just the god of sleep, guys. He's not the god of nightmares. Not here.

But yeah, he's like, all right, great. I'm going to explain what the whole deal was to you for some reason and then leave. What's crazy about this sequence, beyond just the fact that there's a whole bunch of extras playing characters for this trick, is that that's all they're for. They're just there to be object examples of what happened and then they have no business. There's other scenes where Brendan Fraser is still in this prison and then gets broken out of it and there's all these other characters here and they will never do anything again. Oh yeah, and it's weird because...

when he first wakes up in this cell, he is alone, and then they're like, feed and time! And a bunch of, you know, popcorn and candy and shit, you know, various movie theater shit, comes down, and then as well, the rest of these famous people come in on slides from either side. That's great, where the fuck were they? And then they disappear back there later, and I'm like, weird, I don't know how you got back there. It's both, because there's also scenes where Kitty comes to talk to him in prison, and all of them are there. They're all just there. Where the fuck were they? Where were they that they all came in through slides? I'm like, is this just the main?

Gathering point, everyone's got their own individual cells except for him. He has a cell that is the, like, we ran out of individual ones and you're in the meeting area. You have to stay in gen pot forever. Everyone else is in solitary except for feeding time, I guess. Weird. So, yeah. The whole thing is, up top, Monkeybone is just being an asshole and very...

shittily, boringly evil. Yes. But his whole deal is now he's super into merchandising and whatnot. He just wants because he's a hedonist. So he just wants it all. So he's like, oh, I can sell my fucking self. I totally will. Yeah, I don't give a shit. I'll sell anything to anyone, whoever it gives me the best price. Why would I marry my wife when I can spend my time chasing lingerie model extras around a golf course while a song about that plays? Well, that's his dream, which then turns into a nightmare because Hypnos shows up. Yes. Hypnos is like, hey, you were supposed to do this. I didn't get you sent up here to fucking chase after lingerie models. I sent you up here to make nightmares. Now get on it. The other thing that's funny about that is that again, this movie has no...

We've already had a three-month period where nothing fucking happened and we didn't see any of it. Now I have no idea how long Monkeybone has been in Brendan Fraser's body. Who could possibly know? Has it been a couple of weeks? Is that why Hypnose is so pissed? Or is this literally like night two? Because there's a point later where Monkeybone wants to test that nightmare fluid because that's the whole reason he's been sent up there at all, the nightmare fluid. Oh, yeah. He offered to...

Stu, instead of, say, any of the other coma patients who might have had exit passes, because he's like, oh, this guy's girlfriend created the chemical formula for nightmares. That's fucking great. Yes. There's a point where Monkeybone tests it on a dog that he doesn't like. And you're like, oh, that's actually pretty clever. Yeah, on Buster. Make sure it works, right? He tested on Buster. That's fine. But then when the test gets down there, Hypnose is pissed. He's like, are you sending me dog nightmares? I don't give a fucking shit about dog nightmares. I'm like, dude, no one does. It's a test.

You're fully aware of this. He's making sure that it works. And also, why don't you care about dog nightmares? It's pretty fucking weird. It's a bunch of cats in, like, farmer's outfits with giant shears that are going to cut off this dog's balls. Like, that's a crazy fucking nightmare. You'd think you'd be like, oh, that's rad. You'd think you'd want it. You'd think that the fact that he's half goat and everyone down there is some kind of animal, every single other person is either in a coma or there's some kind of fucking animal monster, that they'd be excited by some animal nightmares. But no, he is pissed. But again, this is just, oh, there's a...

prototype monkey bone doll that they get pitched that when you pull its thumb out of his ass, he does a fart and the fart shoots like a dust cloud. It's a giant fucking green dust cloud. And so he's just like, oh, could I put my own particulates in here? And they're like, yeah, sure. We don't give a fuck. Just money. We will let you put whatever you want in here because we have no factory that does this for us. And he's like, great, cool. I'm going to load up a bunch of these things with fucking nightmare juice and then people will get them and get farted in the face and have nightmares. Great.

And that is his plan. Down below, in downtown, Miss Kitty, Rose McCowan is like, hey, sorry about all the problems, but I want to go to Bone Town with you, Stu, for some reason. But I know I can't, so I'm just going to encourage you to go have sex with your girlfriend you won't shut up about. Yeah, she's so lucky to have a guy like you, so I'm going to let you get out. And she, like, sleeps with Hypnos to steal the key, and then the guard- Murders the guard rat? Yeah, the guard is a rat guy, and she just straight murders him. And one of the better, weird things, like, you hear the, and then he unlocks the-

the cage that he's in, walks outside, and then she just like... puts her head up from the body of this rat smeared in blood and is like get out of here just go and you're like holy shit that's an actual nightmare sequence finally it's not just someone saying yes to very arty stop motions because that's what every other character in this movie is it's just like they're like hey we made this bull man but he kind of looks like Picasso drew the face and he's like yes but well it's not like a reference to anything there's no nightmare bulls or no one's having nightmares about a bull that looks like Picasso yes just put it in the movie put an elephant piano player with three arms in the movie someone's scared of that put it in the movie Yeah, this movie was made by that star Jackson Michael Jr. from the Gremlins 2 joke on Key and Field. I love it. It's in the movie. You are a child. You have the mind of a child. You're just saying noun gremlin. Can I put a guard in the movie that's a little person with a rat mask on? You were a psychopath. But it's in the movie, yes. Never change.

Can we put a woman? That's how Kitty ended up in this. It was just some woman in the writer's room. Can we put any woman at all down there? This is why we need women in the writer's room. It's Rose McGowan. She's sexy as fuck. Yes, it's in the movie. Why is she sexy? She's supposed to be a nightmare monster. We're not here to ask secondary questions. So yes, he manages to get out and his plan now is he's not even going to try and sneak there. He just goes to death's domain and is like, hey, I want to go tell my girlfriend I love her. I don't care. You can do whatever you want to my soul. Doesn't matter. I just want like one hour up top to be able to tell my girlfriend I love her. And the only reason death is like,

Yeah, sure. She's just like, oh, I love fucking Monkeybone. That's a great comic. You do good work. That's the only reason, because otherwise, you gotta assume she's probably heard that a lot. Oh, yeah. Well, Thomas Aiden Church is just like, oh, you love your girlfriend. Oh, no one's ever said that one before. He's cracked the code. You gotta love your girlfriend, and then you can go back up. Yeah, and in the middle of him, like, going, yeah, please, I'll do whatever, he's just like, has this little paper doll. Oh, I love my girlfriend so much. And I'm like, thank you, Thomas Aiden Church. That's the thing this movie is missing, is this character having any kind of demonstrative value beyond the fact that his left hand can fart out a cartoon that I guess people like.

Because otherwise he is boring and needy and kind of mean. And he's just not a good main character. So death kicks him in the ass and that sends him back up top into the body of Chris Kattan. We're finally there. Here he is. He's got a broken neck and is in the process of having his organs harvested by Bob Odenkirk when he awakens. Yes. And this is a weird moment because you think the fact that this guy, Chris Kattan, playing a world famous gold medal gymnast who recently broke his neck, which is weird because he has the body.

Of Chris Kattan. As Odenkirk is harvesting the organs from him, he's like, yep, here's his pancreas. This is going to buy me a fucking boat. All right, now I'm going to go for his liver so I can afford my around the world cruise. And I'm like, dude, you do this for everybody. This is like your fucking job. Yeah, weird. Okay. Imagine if you just described out loud how your job was stupid or extremely lucrative as it was extremely lucrative, like all the time. Like imagine like the fucking CEO of Disney or whatever. So they're like, and now I'm going to approve another Marvel show and it's going to buy me another house. But it's weird because I'm like, you don't.

You're just a surgeon. You're not making commission on this. What the fuck are you talking about? It's such a weird, but the reason I was pointing out it's so weird is twofold. One of them is because it feels strange for the character to be doing that because obviously this is what he does. And the other is because this is a really dim view of organ donation. Yes. The movie is basically saying like organ donation is a fucking scam. Yeah, it's just big money for a doctor. Someone's getting rich off your so-called charity. You should take your organs to hell. And then he wakes up and they're like, oh man, I want those organs. And even though this person is running around and talking, they're like, get back on the table. I need to get the rest of your organs. Come back here. We're doctors. And...

So for the rest of this movie, for the last 15 minutes, Chris Kattan will also be chased by a van full of doctors led by Bob Odenkirk. Which is honestly one of the better parts of the movie because he just kept yelling non-sequiturs about being doctors. Like, we don't need invitations! We have diplomas! Yeah, I was like, oh, okay. What?

It's just one of the better parts of the movie because it's fucking shitty. But it is, again, like I said, it's kind of a... It's a weird point for the movie to take this extremely dim view of organ donation. Oh, yeah. And, I mean, same thing with, like, right now, the whole monkey's full of nightmare juice is there is a charity festival going on at a museum that has decided to put a helium-filled monkey bone balloon on top of their museum. And then tie it to the building so it doesn't fly away. Well, you'd think there'd be an easy solution that involves not bankrupting yourself on helium. Yep. But no. And their whole thing is they've got a giant...

head pinata of stew, where they're going to allow guests to pay to try and break it open, and then I guess he's giving out all of these dolls for free to make, I guess, rich people dream nightmares? This sequence is fucking nuts. It only makes sense because they needed a place for the movie to have a climax, but basically, like, earlier in the movie, during one of the scenes where Monkeybone is lavishing himself with money because he's approving all the marketing rights, there's a point where Dave Foley's like, oh, by the way, the local Natural History Museum wants to have a benefit, and they want you to speak at it, and he just goes, oh, you mean I can go to it for a so-called charity, but really just make a lot more money? And Dave Foley's like, yes, that's exactly, because we're both terrible! Yeah! And, uh, there's no reason for him to...

deploy the nightmare juice at this. It's small potatoes. Just let the toys get distributed. That'll get a million kids. This will get 45 or so people in one room. The thing is, he had to personally

inject these monkeys with that nightmare juice. Yeah. Because it's not like he sent a sample of it off to a factory and was like, all right, when you're mass producing these, use this as the formula. So all he's got is these. Well, let me tell you my pitch for why this scene is in this movie. It's set in a National History Museum because they can do a big rotunda scene where, here's the thing, he strips off his regular suit to reveal a wacky silk suit and then he sings a big musical number and he struts around on stage while pointing at people in the audience. Yeah. And this scene is in the movie because the mask was two years earlier. Yes. Clearly. Yeah. That is 100% the reason. Oh yeah, obviously. No, I don't disagree with you at all.

I actually think it was like four or five years earlier, but this is 100% a scene from The Mask. Yeah. Now, of course, during this, Dave Foley manages to get a face full of monkey nightmare ass. And so... he begins having a waking nightmare that his clothes are alive and attacking him so we can get a scene of Dave Foley running around naked, just going, the socks and the clothes, the shirts are in on it. Everyone get naked. My shirt's a clone. He's yelling, he has a purple face. So it's just his moment to be nuts. Yeah. So he gets, he gets hauled out of the building by security, which is a perfect moment for Fraser to get up on stage and be like, everyone ignore the naked purple faced man. Now I'm going to sing Brickhouse in a silk smoking jacket. For some reason at this charity event, I'm going to sing Brickhouse to my girlfriend and then present her with a giant diamond ring. And of course,

Earlier in the movie, Megan Thee Lally had let slip. Oh, you know, and he was going to give you the grandmother's ring to propose. And that's how she found out about the proposal to begin with. Yeah. And that's a big key thing because in Chris Kattan's body, Stu manages to go get that ring first from the house. So when she gets presented with the new ring, she's like, wait a minute, that looks new. And he's like, yeah, because it is new. What do you want an old ring? And she's like, wait, you're not him. I didn't think you were. This is all fucked up. Everything's fucked up. But yeah, it's really weird because here's the thing. The reason I'm like, this is just because the mask existed is what's this charity?

What charity? The charity for the museum. Is it just a museum? Yeah, it's a fundraiser for the museum. So, okay, what's the theme of this charity event? Monkeybone. Is it just Monkeybone? Yeah, it's a Monkeybone themed charity. It's just a Monkeybone night at the museum. Yeah, Monkeybone at the museum. The creator of Monkeybone there, and he was like, can I float a giant Monkeybone head above the audience that's full of Monkeybone toys that fart nightmare juice? And they were like, whatever. No, but you can float a giant head of you with Monkeybone toys in it. Okay, good. So, I guess the whole thing where Dave Foley was like, hey, you want to say yes or no to this charity that wants to, like, have an event night? Like, it's two days later that this happens. It's like, maybe two days later. It's like, so what was the National Museum's plan?

before he said yes. Because up until this point, he'd been on the fence about it. How much shit in time do they put into this thing on the off chance that he would say yes, even though he was a notorious recluse? Yeah, well, you know, sometimes. The mask. Sometimes the mask happens. It's a mix between the mask and what the fuck ever. Yep, and Chris Kattan shows up and, you know, yells and...

finally convinces Julie that, yes, I'm Stu in this guy's body. That's Monkeybone in my body. Here is my grandma's ring. I love you so much. And now we're going to have a big chase scene where Chris Kattan and Brennan Fraser are running around. They get onto the fucking balloon. It's flying around. You know, one thing I do want to specify here is that I don't really like Chris Kattan that much. I thought he was a bad thing for SNL kind of in general, but he is very well used here. No, like we said at the beginning, this is the best thing I've ever seen Chris Kattan do. He's playing a character who is dead and has a broken neck and he commits to both and it's fantastic. He's always like lolling his head to one side. He can be floppy. He can do weird stuff, but he's also not like...

trying to do a weird, like, personality. He's just trying to be regular Brendan Fraser. So it's like, oh, you get to do all the body comedy stuff that you're really good at, but we don't have to have you try and be like, ah, here's my very basic shitty person. Yeah, like, think about it. What's the most memorable fucking Chris Kattan thing you can name besides this? Mr. Peepers? Like, fuck this guy, generally. But he's good here. Yeah. So they fly around farting and punching at each other and organs go flying out of Kattan. It's a whole thing. Yeah, the organs are flying out and doctors are running behind it trying to grab them. And eventually a cop shoots the balloon monkey in the ass.

Right in his butthole. That's a gag for the folks at home. Which causes them to fly around and then slam into the ground, which kills both of them, sending them back down into downtown. But death takes the... So the little like strong man hit the bell thing rises up and is actually a giant robot. Giant skull robot. That Death is piloting that then catches Stu and Monkeybone now as a cartoon because they're both back down into the downtown. Yeah. In either hand. And it's like, hey, I'm here. Anyway, I'm going to squish Monkeybone into you. Yeah, you're one person. I like that she literally just like, yeah, you're more interesting with this guy. You're kind of vanilla without Monkeybone. I like the acknowledgement of that because yeah, the whole movie we've been dealing with him with no Monkeybone in him. And I'm like, this is the worst Brendan Fraser character I have ever seen. He's so boring.

I'm longing for the days of George of the Jungle or something. Oh, yeah. Or blast from the past. Give me anything. And then she's like, all right, great, cool. I'm going to send you back up because I don't give a shit. I'm going to flick you in the ass and shoot you back up. Yep. And then we just kind of get a scene of him being like, hey, girlfriend, I'm back. I'm alive now. Don't ask questions. Everything's fine. And then the most turn of the millennium song ever leads us out into the credits. You've only ever heard it in one other movie also from the year 2000 to 2001. It's Electricity with Renegades, which is a song I've referenced on the show a million times before because he sings a song about this magic land with lemonade trees, mushrooms everywhere where the aliens get high.

Hey, man. Sometimes aliens get high. I was just happy that I heard it again because I was like, oh, I'd almost forgotten about this shit. And now I can finally figure out who the fuck sang it. And that's it. It's a cartoon outro as everyone reveals their own inner monkey bones. Yeah, obviously. No, I don't have a fucking one of those in me. No. And we have now officially talked for as long as this movie is. We've done that.

God, this is bad. Okay, let's get into our best and worst real quick. What is the best thing in Monkeybone? Chris Kattan's physical performance. Great. It's really good. He does a great job playing a character with a broken neck. There's a scene where he's riding on a bus and he's like irritating and sort of slapping at people around him because he doesn't have good control over his senses. Or the part where he has to like yell at his neighbor like, please don't call the police. Yeah. It's very well done. He does a great job as playing Brendan Fraser as a dead guy with a broken neck. Yes. So that was my favorite part of the movie. I was like, oh, this is neat. This is good. I'm glad that Chris Kattan is here for this. Uh-huh. What's your favorite part? I mean, it's obviously that. If I have to pick anything else, it's...

probably the Bob Odenkirk doctor stuff. Like that entire last 15 minutes where we get Odenkirk and Catan, we're like, oh, look, there are bits. They're doing jokes and gags now instead of just fucking whatever. Yeah, I was going to say the other one that I would call out is Thomas Hayden Church doing the, oh, he loves his girlfriend. I love my girlfriend. I shouldn't have to die. It's like Thomas Hayden Church, I don't know exactly what the story behind it is, but he is not credited in this film. This is an uncredited performance of his. Yep. And he's not the only one, which makes me think that a lot of people thought this was a turkey and tried to get their names off it. But he's great. Now, worst single thing in this movie.

I mean, I'm probably going to go with how mopey and shitty the main character is. I just don't like him. There's no compelling reason for me to give a shit about him beyond the fact that he likes his girlfriend. That's not enough of a character trait. Give me something else. Something to hang my hat on. You want me to fucking buy that shit? At least make it a period movie so I can be like, oh, this guy loves his girlfriend. That's why I'm willing to watch Legends of the Fall or Cold Mountain or whatever. Not this, though. I'm not going to watch this fucking dollar store cool world. Fuck you. Cool world is already the dollar store cool world. Oops, you fucked up. No, cool world is the dollar store who framed Roger Rabbit.

And then Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the second sequel to Chinatown. But don't tell anybody. But don't tell anyone. Uh, and the worst thing for me, I'm going to go with the other part of it, which is just monkey bone. Fucking annoying. Is I'm going to go with specifically monkey bone in downtown where I'm like, Oh, at least like when he turns into Fraser, I like, Oh, well you're constrained by, you know, the world that you were in. But when he's just like, I'm a cartoon, I can do whatever. And what I do is boring and shitty. Yeah. It's very, it very much reads like an old screenwriter's idea of what a fun cartoon character would do, which is, you know, a bunch of Sinatra impressions and shit, which at least, you know, I know the Looney Tunes do a lot of that. They're always doing like Jimmy Cagney and Peter Lorre or whatever, but they know when to go out. And the thing is.

All this character has is basically that. And it's like trying to appeal to the latest generation because it's not just those references. He also farts. I assume that's all Ren and Stimpy is, right? I've never seen it. Yeah, we'll throw something to the children. He farts and sucks. That's what I think children are. Farts that suck. All right. So we will give this a rating. Each of us giving it a zero to five for a rating out of 10.

Jeff? It's got so many good actors and character bits in it that I'm going to go as high as a two, but none of it's for the storyline. No. It's for the inventiveness of some of the claymation and some of the stop motion. Thomas Hayden Church, Bob Odenkirk, Chris Kattan's performance. Even Rose McGowan is kind of fun to watch in that one nightmare sequence. Yeah. But everything else about this is just boring. No, it deserves a two because, like you said, it tries. There's special effects that are good. It didn't, like...

it didn't seem like it was cheap. Yeah. It didn't overstay a welcome either. No. And that was the other thing is I'm like, it gets a two because it was an hour and 15 minutes. Yeah. If this was two hours, I would have hated it. Yes. But it's a two because it's just sort of.

it feels like this was an idea that never really manifested. It was like, oh, we have this concept for a movie and here's what's in it. And then they didn't fill in all the parts you need to make a movie. Like I knew that behind the scenes bit about how this kind of inspired the foundation of Adult Swim. But I don't know the rest of the behind the scenes. I don't know why Thomas Aiden Church was like, no, thank you, please. I want to be known for wings and nothing else until Sideways comes out. But I don't know. I also know why it has so many obvious cut plots. Yeah, just, I assume they were like, the only way we're going to get this out the door is to get it as short as possible. Yeah. And just.

try and sell it on the names we have yeah but there you go four out of ten that's basically what it gets in pretty much every ranking system that is out there is a four out of ten so you know no different from us yeah thank you so much for joining us we We'll, of course, be back in two weeks with some more Movie Mastery. If you want some more content, we always have more content. We've got two other main shows. If you go over to patreon.com slash system mastery, you can join us for bonus content where we put out a ton of more things, including, of course, TV Mastery. We are just about done with the current season of shows that got canceled after one episode. And this time we're looking at a show that instead of like most of the stuff we were looking at, shows that got canceled after one episode because everyone looked at it and went, oh, oops, that's terrible.

It was mostly failed because they couldn't make more of it. It's an aired pilot, is what it is. It never got picked up beyond its pilot stage, but we're excited to talk about it anyway. I mean, it got picked up and then canceled again. Oh, okay. It was just, you know, well, we'll get into it. We'll get there. We watched Korgoth of Barbaria, if you remember that, so we will be talking about that over at patreon.com slash system mastery at the $5 level. That unlocks all of our bonus content, our monthly afterthought, a bunch of crap in Discord you can get, just some real big pieces of shit. Big dick energy, good stuff. All kinds of good stuff. Like John was saying, all we do is make content all the time. We have so much more content.

You know, that's why they call us System Mastery, because if you want content, we have Mucho Mas. Mas. Turi. Turi. We have Mucho Mas Turis. System. System. Don't worry about it. What the fuck ever. Whatever, it's in the movie. We have $2 and $1 levels that can support us as well. All of those unlock yet more content. There is so much good shit, so please come on down and support us. And of course, that helps support the show. Let's just keep doing what we're doing. Keep the lights on. By God, we've been doing this for...

10 years just about now. Next week. Next week, the 8th of August. 10 years. 10 years of System Mastery. But at this point now, by a factor of two, the longest job I've ever had. Oh, by a factor of 10, the longest job I've ever had. Thank you so much for joining us. As I said, we will be back in two weeks with more Movie Mastery. And until then, you all have a good one.