Sorry, this movie sucks

Boring

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I watched this film last week, through Netflix. I ended up doing a lot of fast-forwarding after the first few minutes. I usually like experimental films that take risks, but this does not hang together for me at all. It was bad!After viewing it, I checked out one of the Leonard Maltin books--they rate it as BOMB. --OK--There are some Maltin "Bombs" that I've actually liked, but this one doesn't hang together. The acting is OK I guess--but the dialog and characters are so silly and unconvincing in their actions and motivations that it all just put me off. First objection--one of the exceedingly creepy feminist dancers hits Depardieu on the head with a Coke bottle and it breaks into pieces as it knocks him out--COKE BOTTLES DO NOT SHATTER! These bottles are thick and heavy--and they certainly were when this film was made, in 1978. Depardieu's character would have had a fractured skull in any version of "real" life. Right away the viewer thinks that this is a fakey movie.And then the most sympathetic of the feminist dancers suddenly strips off her clothes and has sex with Gerard in front of everyone else, while he is allegedly unconscious. And then they become lovers and start living together, except that the other dancers start wearing pregnancy costumes under their leotards and then the "girlfriend" becomes pregnant.Talk about (out)dated!--The feminist dancers are like someone's weird understanding of the "women's lib" literature of years earlier--circa 1968-1970, and the actresses in this movie are years too old to portray the characters they are supposed to be. The ending of this film--what happens to the "monkey" is so bad and amateurish on every level that I'll skip it here--I've seen more convincing special effects in grade school film projects.--Is this a horror movie or a Roger Corman Drive-In flick? The nuttiness of this film reminds me of another "Bomb" of several years earlier--MYRA BRECKENRIDGE-- wherein stodgy, clueless Hollywood people tried to make a "hip" movie for a younger generation.Not sure who or why this Monkey film was made--but it never hits the target. Mastrioni and Depardieu are really wasted here, and James Coco's artificial exaggerated style of Broadway acting is always hard to take on film unless there is a convincing reason for it. If you want to watch strange movies, you'd probably do better to check out the "Psychotronic Guide" or something similar.

an oddly desolate New York overrun by rats, Gerard Depardieu works at a Roman history wax museum, gets "raped" by a feminist performance art troupe, pals around with a sexually frustrated Marcello Mastroianni ("I have some kind of monster between my legs!"), seduces the elderly hostess of a dinner party in front of the guests, and discovers the corpse of King Kong on the beach, who is clutching an infant monkey that he then adopts. A stencil on Depardieu's wall asks "Why?!" and that's a good question. Although composed of several interesting elements (some of which recall Ferreri's earlier THE SEED OF MAN) it doesn't gel into any cohesive whole. The best I can do at putting it together is to say it's an absurdist treatise on the decline of civilization, but not all the pieces seem to fit. It's an exercise in non-sequitur, and that's not a form I enjoy very much unless it's done very light-heartedly. There are amusing moments but the overall tempo is too sluggish. Also, the performances aren't very good except for Depardieu and Mastroianni, and even they don't appear to understand what they're doing. Sometimes Ferreri's idiosyncrasies add up to something really exciting, but here it's a near miss.

Strange, and it has some interesting bits, but it's dull and nonsensically plotted. Gerard Depardieu and Marcello Mastroinanni make asses of themselves, and Gail Lawrence, better known under her porn name, Abigail Clayton, is naked for about 50% of the film. Depardieu plays a boy toy in New York City. One day his friend, played by Mastroianni, is walking along the beach when he discovers the corpse of King Kong, whose orphaned baby he gets Depardieu to adopt. The themes involve the ever-changing gender roles, and this could have been very interesting. Unfortunately, it has no real plot to speak of, and it just meanders from weird scene to weird scene. Sometimes, the visuals are quite haunting, especially when the characters are on the beach with the New York cityscape towering over them and the giant ape corpse dominating the bottom of the frame. 5/10.

This is not a real movie in terms of a story but rather a collection of impressions about the life of a lonely guy living somewhere in a future New York slum during an apocalyptic virus wave that caused the death of thousands of people. He's surviving by taking bizarre jobs for a living, and finally he's finding a small monkey as a buddy.The whole atmosphere is disturbing and sinister, but the "story" is a bit lame sometimes. The photography is stunning and occasionally reminds of the famous apocalyptic paintings of Hieronimus Bosch to the shadowy impressions of Enrico de Chirico. A really disturbing, surreal French movie featuring a young Gerard Depardieu.