Bye Bye Monkey

[David Morris]

http://www.shockcinemamagazine.com/monkey.html

Never one to embrace the ordinary, Italian arthouse director Marco Ferreri
went hog wild with this New York City-based oddity starring Gerard
Depardieu (back in his early, more subversive years, before turning into a
fat French joke). And if you thought Ferreri's LA GRANDE BOUFFE or THE LAST
WOMAN were strange, he was simply warming up for this wrongheaded vision of
America. The plot alone is enough to leave your queasy, with Depardieu
playing a French cad (a big stretch, eh?) who works with a troupe of
half-baked radical feminists (isn't that redundant?) who feels they can't
effectively argue against rape until they've actually experienced the act
firsthand. Later, he runs into eccentric old fart Marcello Mastroianni,
who, while roaming Lower Manhattan, stumbles across a giant (fake) ape
lying dead near the Hudson at the foot of the World Trade Center (shades of
Dino DeL.'s KING KONG!), with a baby chimpanzee buried in its fur. And it's
no surprise when Depardieu adopts the cute li'l hairball, since they almost
look like father 'n' son. The plot continues to spin uncontrollably for the
first two-thirds, then picks up when girlfriend Gail Lawrence gets
pregnant, Gerard is left alone with his monkey, and everybody's life
descends into the crapper. To be honest, I don't have a clue what the hell
Ferreri is trying to say, except for a few vague gestures about humanity.
Modern society is on the precipice of self-ruin, the younger characters are
lost and deluded, the older ones are weird and forgotten, and everybody
within camera range is a total freak. Meanwhile, Depardieu puts his dignity
(and limited knowledge of English) on the line with snappy dialogue like
"Ma munkee iz dead".
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