"By this point in comedian Nina Conti's directorial debut, there is already a heady backlog of sexual tension inside a camper van between suicidal radio host Roy (Shenoah Allen) and the monkey (Nina Conti) who saved him from stringing himself up in a New Mexico motel room. He's understandably curious to find out who's underneath the get-up and the persona that comes with it a profane blowhard who holds forth on everything around them in the stuffy middle-England tones of Anne Robinson."
"After her mother's death from cancer, she then self-destructively shacked up with Wade; having decided to flee his clutches, she insists Roy take her to a Colorado lake where she plans to set up a banana pontoon business. He has his own reckoning planned: going to the graveyard and digging up his hated father to recover a luxury watch with which he will finance her lake-leisure dreams."
"As Wade pursues them on his racing bike, which is the spur for this consistently guffawsome escapade, the monkey gets the best lines: Your dad's not going to dig himself up. But it's quickly obvious that this parody road trip is driven by real pain particularly when Roy starts to move in closer. Jane's leaving it up to me now. She died last night just like you, cautions the monkey, who is a kind of inverse ventriloquist's puppet; responsible, rather than a raging id."
Nina Conti's directorial debut follows suicidal radio host Roy and a woman in a monkey costume who saved him. The monkey reveals she was Jane, a nightclub mascot who lived with her abusive stepfather Wade and became entangled with her costume. Jane insists Roy drive her to a Colorado lake to start a banana pontoon business; Roy plans to dig up his father in a cemetery to recover a luxury watch to fund the venture. Wade pursues them by racing bike, generating comic set-pieces. The film balances guffawsome road-trip parody with genuine pain, probing identity, alter egos, and trauma. Conti's camerawork occasionally feels uncertain.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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