Monkeybone: Is Brendan Fraser’s forgotten collaboration with Henry Selick “Awfully Good” or just awful?

The late nineties and early 2000s marked the peak of Brendan Fraser’s career as a leading man. The 1992 comedy classic, Encino Man put him on the map in a big way, and he had several other comedy hits throughout the decade, including George of the Jungle (along with an underrated drama called School Ties). But, it was 1999’s The Mummy that truly elevated him, with him cast as the wisecracking, Indiana Jones-style hero in what turned out to be one of the year’s biggest hits. 

Yet, one movie Fraser did pretty soon after The Mummy has all but been forgotten, the live-action/ stop-motion hybrid Monkeybone, which was directed by The Nightmare Before Christmas’s Henry Selick. In it, Fraser played a harried cartoonist who meets his most famous creation, Monkeybone (voiced by John Turturro) while in a state of limbo following a car accident. Bridget Fonda, Chris Kattan and Rose McGowan co-star. 

Before it came out, there were rumors that the studio, 20th Century Fox, had removed much of Selick’s darker material to market the movie as a quasi-family film, which it was never intended to be. It was a box office disaster, only grossing $5.4 million domestically on a then-mammoth $75 million budget. Lucky for Fraser and all involved, it was soon overshadowed by the success of The Mummy Returns, although Fraser would struggle to regain his foothold in comedy, with 2003’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action another pricey flop.

In this episode of Awfully Good, our host Jesse Shade takes a look at this ill-remembered movie and tries to see if perhaps it’s an underrated gem, or a movie that deserves to be as obscure as it’s become. Check out the embedded video above and let us know what you think in the comments!