Review of Spanking the Monkey (1994) by Nathan E — 25 Jan 2008

Is David O. Russell the most pretentious person in Hollywood? Probably. Spanking the Monkey marks the third O. Russell film I've seen, and it's definitely the weakest of the bunch.

Ok, so in case you were wondering, no this is not a "comedy." You won't really "laugh" at all throughout the movie. More appropriately, Spanking the Monkey is more of a psychological drama akin to, if not inspired by, the famous Greek tragedy Oedipus. For those uninitiated, Oedipus was pretty whacked out with mother-son incest and self-eye-gouging. Now, replace the eye gouging with suicide a la belt, and you've got a pretty similar premise.

Honestly, those are the most interesting parts of the movie. Everything else... not so much. It's all boring, pretentious, slow and unfunny tripe. It's not as quirky or cute as Huckabees, and does not deliver the impact or humor like Three Kings. It falls short in every category and what we're left with is a meandering and dwindling character study of a mostly uninteresting character.

Now that's not to say the movie doesn't have a few spots where it shines. Spanking the Monkey is impressive as a super low-budget independent film (roughly estimated at $80,000). Sure not a lot happens, nor are there any complex P.T. Anderson long takes which require precise pre-production, but itâ??s impressive and refreshing to see that feature-length movies can be made for under a million, or even $100,000. The soundtrack is also a highlight of the film, composed entirely out of songs from the band "Morphine." You'll definitely get your shock value's worth out of this movie, too; itâ??s another one of those good water-cooler movies. I mean that's to say if you can actually finish the movie... because overall, itâ??s pretty monotonous.