Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Python Hyena Monkeybone (2001): Dir: Henry Selick / Cast: Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Kattan, Rose McGowan: Brendan Fraser plays a cartoonist who creates Monkey Bone, which is obvious slang. This character is being celebrated at a banquet but on his way home he is in a car accident that renders him unconscious. His sister apparently made a pact that if either of them was to be on life support then the plug would be pulled. His girlfriend discovers that he is in nightmare land and needs nightmare juice to scare him awake. The reality of being cast in a film this shitty should be enough to scare anybody awake. This nightmare world is beautifully detailed with odd creatures but Fraser must get past to reality. Unfortunately Monkey Bone also gets past and possesses his body. Director Henry Selick was more successful creating James and the Giant Peach but here he loses control. Fraser handles the cartoon posturing effectively but the whole nightmare land element needs better explaining than what we are given. Bridget Fonda as his girlfriend is flat. Whoopi Goldberg is horrible as the nightmare judge. Chris Kattan is featured with a distorted body. Rose McGowan plays a character named Miss Kitty, which sounds too kinky for this mess. After this film he will likely have a distorted career. Forgettable mess makes one wonder if Selick was in nightmare land. Score: 1 / 10

TheMarwood Disastrous test screenings led Fox to recut the hell out of this thing and a regime change over at Fox that inherited this mess unceremoniously dumped it after numerous delays. Originally set up with Ben Stiller in the lead and Selick years later recognizing that would have been better, Fraser is just here to do his idiot shtick that made him money in films like George of the Jungle. The film sits very uncomfortably with anything that is live action and not involving a major effect. There is no attention to plot, drama, pacing or tone. We do get some breathtaking visuals, which is where Selick is clearly most comfortable with. A screwball final act with a corpse running around and a group of surgeons running after his organs is just an embarrassment of bad writing and Selick not in any sort of control of this film. In fact most of this film is bonkers and while some scenes become so unhinged and occasionally inspired, most of the film works against itself. It's a shapeless mess of a film that isn't for kids and too stupid for everyone else. Lots of effort went into the art direction and costume design and makeup and the money spent is up there on the screen, but there was an actual movie that needed to be filmed and the filmmakers seemed resentful having to film humans.

ctomvelu-1 It is hard to believe the guy who made NIGHTMARE and THE GIANT PEACH made this monstrosity, easily one of the 10 worst movies ever made. A cartoonist (Fraser) ends up entering and becoming trapped in his own cartoon world while the protagonist of his cartoon enters our world and acts like the monkey that he is. Fraser is terrible, the plot is terrible, and one wonders what Bridget Fonda as Fraser's love interest was thinking when she signed on for this one. The film is so unimaginably bad that you'll probably have to watch it to understand just how bad it truly is. Whoopi Goldberg plays Death, but she is only in the movie for a brief time.

DAVID SIM Henry Selick is one of the most underrated filmmakers at work in Hollywood today. He hasn't many features under his belt, but that's because of the effort he invests in his projects. His films take years to complete. Selick's trademark as a director is his love of stop-motion animation, where hand-crafted figures are manipulated an inch at a time. Its a lengthy, time-consuming process that requires a great deal of patience, but in all the films he's made, his perseverance has paid off, and he's turned out some truly stunning work.Although The Nightmare Before Christmas is credited as a Tim Burton film, it was directed by Selick. Together they created a breathtaking world, unlike any I've ever seen before or since. Selick then moved on to the adaptation of James and the Giant Peach, another excellent film. Both were box-office flops sadly, and Selick continues to struggle to find funding for his films as a result. And now we have Monkeybone, a film that attempts to merge stop-motion with live-action.Of Selick's films so far, Monkeybone feels the least satisfying. Maybe because it doesn't quite have the intelligence he brought to his previous work. This is pitched at a much more juvenile level. Brendan Fraser plays Stu Miley, a cartoonist who is the creator of Monkeybone, a wacky wisecracking chimp. After Stu gets in a car crash, he slips into a coma.And winds up in a bizarre buffer-zone between the land of the living and the dead. Populated by strange creatures of all kinds, even Stu's creation Monkeybone is here as a nightclub act. If Stu ever wants to wake up, he has to get an exit pass from Death (Whoopi Goldberg) to return to the waking world. Monkeybone helps him get one, but double-crosses him at the last moment, uses the pass to escape, wakes up in full control of Stu's body, where he wreaks havoc.There's quite a clever idea at the heart of Monkeybone. A figment of your imagination made flesh that tries to take over your life. But although Henry Selick can work marvels when it comes to the animated world, he seems less sure of himself when it comes to live action. When Selick directed James and the Giant Peach, the stop-motion scenes were wonderful, and carried by considerable charm and energy. But he bookended the film with live-action, and its clearly a medium he's not as comfortable in. Because Monkeybone relies on a lot of live-action, the film suffers as a result.A lot of the live-action scenes tend to degenerate into slapstick farce. An approach that would work fine in animation, but less so in live-action. Brendan Fraser is well suited to this type of material, and he plays the part of Monkeybone with a lot of enthusiasm, but I am starting to get a bit fed up of this kind of shtick that Fraser stars in, because its beginning to seem like the only kind of thing he can do.The most interesting aspects of Monkeybone are inside Stu's mind, where his consciousness is trapped in Downtown, a sort of waystation for lost souls. This is the part of the film that really comes alive, because Downtown's an extraordinary, eye-popping piece of set-design.Its filled with so many details I'm not sure where to begin in describing it. Its like a lunatic carnival if lorded over by Tim Burton. And the way Selick merges stop-motion animated creatures with live actors is quite remarkable. There are too many bizarre creatures to keep track of. Cyclops'. Yellow bulls. Giant sized wasps. But its just as astonishing as HalloweenTown, and even occasionally surpasses that inspired creation through sheer invention.The human cast is OK. Rose McGowan lends fine support as a catgirl who lives in Downtown. The sight of her in a catsuit is worth the price of admission alone! And Whoopi Goldberg makes a nicely exasperated Death.But Monkeybone is less than the sum of its parts. Its a film that doesn't go far enough. And substitutes crude toilet humour when the invention runs out. A failing that works against the film is the character of Monkeybone himself. He's not really an interesting character. He's just some obnoxious chimp who looks like he's wandered in from another film.Sadly, Monkeybone was another flop for Selick. Granted I was a little disappointed with it, especially when compared to Selick's previous work. Even if it has moments of real inspired lunacy, its just not up to the high standards of Henry Selick, and only seems to add a further nail into the coffin of his flagging career. And he's a man who really deserves much better.