Monkeybone is a nightmare.

Surprisingly, Monkeybone is not my nightmare. I really thought this movie was going to blow. I mean, you take an animated monkey, Brendan Fraser, and boobie jokes, and how can it come out good? I dunno. Maybe I was on drugs, but I thought this movie was both hilarious and well crafted, technically and narratively. Plus, hey, boobies.

A lot of critics will probably compare Monkeybone to Cool World. Why bother? The similarities are so superficial. Oooh, hunky guy gets thrown into crazy animated alternate universe. Yeah. Very astute, Mr. Maltin.

Monkeybone was shockingly well done, funny, and at times even bordering on heartwarming, while Cool World... well Cool World is the yardstick by which all crappy screenplays are measured.

"Robert DeNiro, why on God's green earth did you agree to be in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle? "

"Well, I read the script, and it wasn't as shitty as Cool World. Fuggedaboudit!"

I'm not going to go there. I'm going to say that Monkeybone was the opposite of The Cell. In that review I whined that the movie seemed like nothing more than a lame attempt to stick a bunch of ideas for "cool disturbing" special effects together with a thin and watery glue of plotline.

Monkeybone takes us through a rollercoaster of nightmare imagery, but someday when a friend spots the DVD on your shelf, you won't have to embarrassedly mumble, "Yeah, it sucked, but I thought the special effects were really cool and... um, stuff."

Admittedly, the difference between the nightmare visuals in The Cell and Monkeybone are like the differences between Trent Reznor's bad dreams and Britney Spears's bad dreams but the point is... the point is... okay, I forget where I'm going with this...

You know what's really on my mind?

Josie and the Pussycats.

Through my secret industry connections (outside the Shell), I had a chance to read the script for Josie a few months ago, and ever since then I've been singing a neat, sweet, groovy song in my heart, waiting in knee weakening anticipation for it to come out. It's getting close. I'm so damned excited. I promise you, it'll be the Spice World of our generation.

Right, wait. We were talking about Monkeybone.

In Monkeybone, Brendan Fraser plays a quiet, sweet, humble man with a heart of gold and a soul of pure purity, who is on the verge of becoming a huge success through his TV show about a farting monkey who came out of his erection.

Ha-whaaa? It's like if Beavis and Butthead were created by Mr. Rogers.

I wonder if the sloppy, poorly animated style of the Monkeybone cartoons shown in the movie was a social commentary on the state of television animation today, or if they just hired somebody really cheap to do it.

I wonder why the producers of Monkeybone got Rose "I can see Tatum's nipples" McGowan all dolled up like a kitty kat, and then they only put her into a few scenes. I would have had a picture-in-picture thing going on so she could still be in scenes where she didn't belong. Then again, that's probably why I don't get to make movies.

I wonder why after I've lived in LA for so long, on a whim I went to the Natural History Museum on the same day that I saw Monkeybone, a film with a climactic finale that takes place at the Natural History Museum. For a brief second, I actually thought to myself, "Hey, I was just there two hours ago! Man, if I stayed, I coulda met Brendan Fraser!"

I wonder why I'm such a moron.

I wonder if this goddamn rainy streak is going to stop before my leaky, rotten kitchen ceiling caves in.

I wonder when this stopped being a movie review and started being a really crappy online journal entry.

I guess as tradition states, I should wrap up this review with an apology. Something to the effect of, "I'm sorry that I can't write funny reviews for movies that I liked, next time I'll see something with Tom Green in it."

Monkeybone really kicked a lot of ass. Go see it.

You know what? There's a lot of Bedazzled in this movie too, now that I think about it.

Remember in that movie how Brendan Fraser was supposed to burn in Hell for all eternity, but because of his pure heart and tight butt, Liz Hurley spared him the underworld and allowed to return to Earth?

I wonder if he's just so damn charming and good looking that he'll always be able to pull this routine. It's like the fountain of eternal life. All you have to do is convince Death, the Devil, or the underworldly middle-manager of your choice that you're so full of love that you need to return topside, and boom, you not only don't have to kick the bucket, but you also get to score with Bridget Fonda.

The dude's got it all figured out. Too bad he's wasting eternal life starring in The Mummy Returns.