Flying Monkeys is one of those movies that compels the viewer to ask the eternal question, “Sure, why not?”
It makes a fine double-feature with BloodMonkey, especially on the weekend that Oz The Great and Powerful hits theaters.
BloodMonkey is a 2007 classic in the “anthropology done (horribly and nonsensically wrong) on film” genre. It stars F. Murray Abraham as the anthropology professor. That dude was Amadeus!
That’s some quality programming!
Here’s a summary/viewing guide for Flying Monkeys that contains details that might be spoilers for people who a) care and b) have never seen a made for tv movie before, especially a SyFy movie.
In the opening scene, hilarity and bloodshed occur on an “airplane.”
Then, it’s a sunny day in Gale, Kansas, where a high school graduation is happening.
(Gale, Kansas. Flying monkeys. Go on, go make yourself a strong drink – I’ll wait)
It’s a sunny day in Gale, Kansas, which looks and sounds suspiciously like Louisiana. Sure, why not?
A guy who looks like Dr. Oz would look if he’d been punched in the face is late to his smart and responsible daughter Joan’s graduation. She expects him to be late because he’s been irresponsible ever since Mom died, which is totally clever and unique and in no way the relationship of every other father and daughter on television.
Face-punched Dr. Oz feels bad for being a terrible failure, so he goes to a pet store and buys Joan, who works as a vet tech, a monkey. A killer flying blood monkey disguised as a cute capuchin monkey! The capuchin who killed a smuggler in an airplane in the beginning of the movie!
What could go wrong?
We find out what could go wrong as the first act ends and the second act begins, after Joan and Face-Punched Dr Oz let the monkey live in their house. Loose. Without a diaper. For almost an hour of running-time which seems to be weeks of story-time.
That means you now have about 45 minutes to go forage for some dinner and make yourself another drink before the third act. You won’t miss much. At the sound of the screaming, there will be some badly rendered CG flying monkey action, so you might want to take a peak at those scenes because they’re pretty awesome. Or pretty awful. It will depend on how many drinks you’ve had, I suspect.
Monkeys. Possessed by demons. Sure, why not?
So a bunch of stuff happens but none of it really matters. I don’t think. I may have missed some stuff. (Those drinks don’t mix themselves).
Husband says you didn’t miss much if you weren’t paying attention. There was some gibberish exposition from some random secondary characters in the jungles of Louisiana/Hong Kong about how you need sacred weapons to kill the Flying Monkeys because if you just shoot them with a regular gun they multiply spontaneously and you suddenly have not one, but two, full-grown rubbery-looking hairless flying monkeys. More shooting, more monkeys. Like gremlins, only sillier.
Sure, why not?
This explains why there was only one winged demon-monkey left on Earth when I went into the kitchen and an army of them when I returned only moments later.
Robert Rodriguez’s niece-in-law, Electra Avellan gets top billing, presumably because she has a shower scene. She’s an otherwise infrequently-seen supporting character named Sonya who is Joan’s best friend. That seems to be the start of the third act, her shower scene. It’s normally wildly obvious when one act ends and the next begins in this movies, but to be honest I haven’t been paying a lot of attention.
(Niece-in-law? That sounds ridiculous. Just call her his niece).
I can only hope that monkey diaper authority Jungle Pete doesn’t see this movie (without me). All that un-diapered monkey action in that house would make him twitchy, despite the movie’s overall anti-exotic pets/animal smuggling “message.” And the demons.
