MONKEYBONE & VOLERE VOLARE – A DOUBLE-BILL OF EXCEEDINGLY STRANGE (BUT VERY FUNNY!) LIVE-ACTION/ANIMATED MOVIES

Publicity poster for Monkeybone (© Henry Selick/1492 Pictures/20^th Century Fox – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only for educational/review purposes only)

MONKEYBONE

On 26 January 2020, I watched a decidedly strange but undeniably engrossing live-action/animation mash-up movie from 2001 entitled Monkeybone. I had never previously heard of this movie until I encountered by chance a DVD of it some weeks earlier, and as a longstanding animation fan duly purchased it.

Directed by Henry Selick and based upon Kaja Blackley's graphic novel Dark Town, this thoroughly mesmerizing and delightfully mad movie stars Brendan Fraser as a cartoonist named Stu Miley, whose most famous creation, the eponymous Monkeybone, takes on a life of its own - Stu's, that is!

Prior to this sinister body-switch, they find themselves trapped in a Purgatory-like precursor to the Land of Death, a dark carnivalesque realm called Down Town, where Death - played very wryly by Whoopi Goldberg, no less - has all the best lines. Bridget Fonda joins in the manic fun and games as Stu's understandably bewildered girlfriend, a sleep and nightmares researcher named Dr Julie McElroy.

A very zany movie, to say the least, Monkeybone is packed with surreal stop-motion animation, plus seamless assimilation of live-action antics with cartoon chaos – but don't take my word for it. Check out its official trailer here and judge for yourself!

Italian DVD cover for Volere Volare (© Guido Manuli/Maurizio Nichetti/Pentafilm – Bambù/Fine Line Features/Pentafilm Distribuzione – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only for educational/review purposes only)

VOLERE VOLARE

And on 27 January 2020, I watched Volere Volare, an Italian live-action/animated mash-up movie from 1991 (my grateful thanks go to Dave Baldwin for alerting me to this once again new-to-me film after reading my Monkeybone mini-review on my Facebook timeline). The only DVDs of it that I can track down are Italian with no English audiotrack or subtitles. However, I found it on YouTube with the option of auto-generated English subtitles, which were mostly fine.

Jointly directed and written by Guido Manuli and Maurizio Nichetti, Volere Volare is indeed an exceedingly strange but very funny film, all about a little man named Maurizio (played by co-director/co-writer Nichetti) working as a sound dubber for silent cartoons and a tall lady named Martina (Angela Finocchiaro) with a highly unusual clientele for whom she performs extremely unusual roles...

Anyway, one day during their hitherto entirely separate lives, Maurizio and Martina inadvertently meet, and find themselves attracted to one another. However, when Maurizio unexpectedly begins to transform into a cartoon version of himself, events become somewhat complicated, as one might expect. Admit it, we've all been there!

Weird plot notwithstanding, it's all good fun though! If you want to watch the version currently still on YouTube that I viewed, with the English subtitles option, click here to do so.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!