Life couldn’t be better for cartoonist Stu Miley (Brendan Fraser). He has created a hit comic strip featuring Monkeybone, a petulant rascal with a penchant for wise cracks and racy antics. Stu, happy and in love with his beautiful girlfriend Julie (Bridget Fonda) is on the verge of big success, as his comic strip is about to become a national television show. But on the night Stu is to propose to Julie, he is struck down in a freak accident.

While Stu’s body lies comatose – and Julie maintains a constant bedside vigil – his conscious spirit is transported to Downtown, a purgatory-like limbo existing between life and death — with a carnival landscape populated by mythical gods and creatures who revel in the nightmares of the living.

Upon his arrival, Stu learns his ominous fate: There’s no turning back. And just as things seem like they couldn’t get any worse, Stu’s alter ego, Monkeybone, springs to life to stir up some trouble. Now, Stu must outwit Death (Whoopi Goldberg) in order to return to the world of the living before the doctors pull the plug on Stu’s body. But Monkeybone has hatched his own plot that could thwart Stu’s plans…