Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

In the history of stupid-ass movie titles you’re going to be hard pressed to find a movie title as weak as this one… ‘Who’s Your Monkey?’. I thought the movie ‘Wieners’ had a stupid ass movie title… and it does, but I think this one just might be worse. Sure, there’s a monkey in the movie. So the hell what. Plus the title doesn’t mean anything. I thought maybe they were going for the catch phrase angle like when that movie ‘Fled’ came out with Stephen Baldwin and Larry Fishburne years ago and they were on the talk show circuit saying ‘gotta fled’ in an effort to generate a catch phrase. Hmmm… never caught on, not that this stops me from using it. But that’s were I thought they were going with this one… ‘Hey bro, you got my back?’ with the bro replying back with ‘Hell yeah… who’s your monkey?’ While that is plenty damn stupid in itself, at least it would’ve made sense if it was in the movie, but it ain’t in the movie. But what really sucks about this title is that while ‘Wieners’ was stupid ass title for a stupid ass movie, ‘Who’s Your Monkey?’ is a stupid ass title for a movie that was actually pretty damn decent. Note that the original title of this movie was NOT ‘Who’s Your Monkey’ and was probably the brainstorm of some stupid ass movie executive. Stupid ass.

Mark (Scott Grimes), Bobby (Jason London), Laith (Scott Michael Campbell) and Hutto (David DeLuise) are four thirty-somethings who’ve been friends forever with each of them possessing serious issues. Bobby is still trying to recover from the tragic death of his young wife two years ago, Mark has been insuranced out of being a medical doctor and cooks crystal meth to make ends meet, Laith is the bitch of the group who feels he can’t satisfy his girlfriend who happens to be a few notches above his pay-grade and Hutto is a brow beaten married tough guy whose wife has been nine months pregnant for what seems like the last year and a half.

The boys have stayed relatively tight throughout the years but this bond is challenged a bit by a little situation, that being Mark the Doctor who can’t practice, impaling Reed (Kevin Durant), the drug dealing bestiality show ringmaster, in the brain with a shuriken. Or a Throwing Star, which was actually this movies original title. Not a great title either but far better than ‘Who’s your monkey’. I know… get off it already. Why Mark killed this cat is complicated but it was largely in self defense. Now our four friends must come together as one, under the tutelage of Hutto who seems to have some experience in this field, and get rid of the body. As is usually the case with movies of this ilk it’s not really about the destination, that being finding somewhere to dump the dead drug dealer, but the journey to this destination. Learning the meaning of true friendship, finding out what’s really important in life, realizing that taking the batteries of your woman’s vibrator isn’t going to stop her from playing with herself, and all of those other little funny things that happen in between.

I’ve seen my main man Jason London in so many Sci-Fi original type movies as of late, movies that he pretty much sleep walks through, that I forgot what fine actor he can be when he has the desire to do so because he was the best thing in what was a very entertaining movie. While fully recognizing that there’s nothing particularly original about ‘Who’s Your Monkey?’ it is delightfully subversive, morally ambiguous and very funny most of the time, which more than makes up for the somewhat familiar story line, some painfully predictable elements and the occasional gap in logic.

Director Todd Breau has directed a film which is also very much a ‘guy’ movie, probably similar to one of those Lifetime movies that you courageously sit and watch with your woman, completely oblivious to how she could possibly be enjoying that garbage. This flick is about the same, at least from a man’s perspective because it does exist in a world that is uniquely XY, such as blindly loyal friendship, doing incredibly stupid things because of this blindly loyal friendship and most women’s inability to understand this pathology. And a man’s equal inability to explain this pathology to a woman in a way that she can understand it. Personally though, unlike the character of Hutto’s woman in this movie as played by the always lovely Sienna Goines who took bitchy irritation to a new level with her portrayal of the bitchy pregnant wife in this movie, if I walk out the house late at night and inform my wife ‘I got business’, as I have done, I’m not getting any flack because she understands. Oh I get plenty of mouth on everything else under the sun, but I think the fact that the girl has brothers has assisted her immensely in understanding this uniquely male behavior.

But all that other nonsense aside, including the absolutely horrible title of this movie, the bottom line with ‘Who’s Your Monkey’ is that it this is a movie that is listed in genre as a comedy, and praise the Lord above, it actually delivers to us a comedy. For this, my friends, we are eternally grateful. Gotta fled.