MONKEY SHINES:
AN EXPERIMENT IN FEAR
I think something's wrong with me
(Stupid irrelevant trivia - as I watched this movie last night, my sister traveled three hundred kilometers, walked into the apartment, filled a jug with water and promptly poured it into the TV. Swear to God. This review was completed with the completed viewing of the film - the next day, after the sizzling innards of the TV had dried out.)
Add Monkey Shines: An Experiment In Fear to the list of movies everybody in their right minds hates, and I really like. It's in good company with The Mangler and Leprechaun 4: In Space. When I recommend this movie to you in the last paragraph of this review, just keep that in mind, okay?
When we first see Alan (Jason Beghe), he's got it all: a super-foxy fiance (Janine Turner), a place of his own, a nearly completed law degree...so when we see him jogging one morning, it's when the music reaches its most preposterously saccharine that we think to ourselves "Man, here comes the truck." Sure enough, BAM! Way up in the air goes Alan, rendered a paraplegic by the accident.
Needless to say, everything goes to shit for Alan after that. His fiance leaves him (for the surgeon that operated on him, no less!), and he has to move in with his overbearing mother, who treats him like a four-year-old and gives ridiculous toasts like "To Alan, and the start of his new life!", and his best friend (Alan Pankow), while plenty personable, is finding ways to medicate himself right out of any human need for sleep. And this is brian's book, and this is christine hacking in. oops this is brian's review. It's a movie review as he has just just told me. I hope he keeps this in as proof. I haven't watched this movie yet but it SUCKS. Go see shakespeare in love, it rocks. So does lock stock and two smoking barrels. Love christine.
(Brian again) This review is getting pretty weird. But I promised to keep that in. Don't worry guys, I'll make sure Christine gets all the help she needs. (I live right across from a hospital, so the guys in the white suits don't have far to drive)
But, back to the review, shall we? Okay, plot, let's see...Alan gets so depressed about his new lot in life that he attempts suicide. Of course, he fails, and his friend - an animal researcher - does the best favor for him he can think of: he donates Ella, a little (capuchin?) monkey that he's been injecting with human brain tissue to enhance its intelligence, to a "Helping Hands" program which trains her to be Alan's faithful (if petite) servant. At first she's a great little helper; then a "psychic link" (uh-oh) forms between her and Alan, and she starts acting out his more violent, unconscious desires. Things get extra complicated when Alan and the monkey's trainer (Kate McNeil) start hitting it off.
It's far-fetched as all hell, Iknow. But Romero does well with it, managing to establish Ella as a character with as much personality as a monkey can be expected to have, and cleverly, tensely exploring the relationship between her and the man who's fifty times her size but considerably more helpless. Alan's plight is well-realized by the script - a man made vulnerable to little things like budgies, and slipping off of the bed, is physically no match to even a four-pound monkey. The climactic confrontation between the two is at once outrageous and clever - and thus, for me, immensely satisfying.
The script by Romero (based on the book by Michael Stewart) wisely takes itself fairly seriously. Monkey Shines has a good sense of humor (the biggest laugh being Alan's mother's understated, disbelieving reply when the nurse accuses him of killing her budgie), but never uses it to defuse situations or just become comic relief. The material deftly goes from disease-of-the-week-TV-movie material ("Aw, lookit him regain his independence!") that we all know it can't be limited to, to some very tensely constructed situations.
I also liked how this movie reaches out and ventures into some forbidden territory - sure, it's the only instance in this movie, and we might expect more from a taboo-smashing filmmaker like George Romero, but how many handicapped sex scenes do we get to see? Alan is established as having lost his sexual function, but not his sexual desire or identity. How's this to be reconciled? Well, it is. It kind of has to be seen to be believed, but it's the only scene of its kind that comes to mind. It's sort of semi-erotic, and marginally kinky, but it's tastefully done (well, up to the part where the camera cuts to all those chattering, jumping-around monkeys) and really kind of sweet, and Romero deserves some credit here for both his guts and his skill.
Some things'll make you scratch your head, though. Stephen Root's character reminds me somewhat of Lance Henriksen's in Man's Best Friend - an animal researcher who is clearly meant to be villainous, but the movie does not establish any genuine villainy here. The notion of animal experimentation might be abhorrent to you (it often is to me, especially concerning cosmetics), but in that movie, the character's justification for his work was far more convincing than sobs of "It's cruel!" Likewise, here - the dean is played by an actor who specializes in playing heels, and other than that, the only thing that would make him the boo-hiss character he's meant to be is an assumption in the audience's distaste for him (and maybe a "mouse" scene reminiscent of that in The Abyss). All this aside, every scene involving this guy is pure filler.
Tom Savini is given makeup duties, but doesn't get to do much. What's with those scenes where Alan has fangs? I really hope it was meant to be metaphorical. The acting throughout is quite good by everybody, although the fact that a monkey steals the show away from all of them might be telling of lapses I'm not noticing. And there's this one scene that is just plain unclear, where Ella removes a large battery from Alan's wheelchair ' I guess the battery just powered the light.
While Monkey Shines has a number of minor flaws like that, the only serious problem is how long it is. This movie goes on for 113 minutes, and features all sorts of blubbery subplots (the nurse, the mother, the ex-fiance, the self-injection, and the dean, to say nothing of the possible cure) which could and should have liposuctioned right out until the movie reached a respectable, manageable running length. Alan, the monkey, the best friend, and the trainer are really all this movie needs. It's like the second CD of The Gathering's latest album - it's quite good, but do we really need track five to go on for twenty-five minutes of dreamy "texture"?
Would I recommend this movie to you? Sure, if you've got two hours to kill (take note of the awesomely bad horror-movie poetry on the front of the box). Romero has never been a very "fun" director, but this is as close to fun as he gets, and that's enough fun for me. I liked it. But then, everybody in their right minds hates this movie.