Saturday, October 30, 2010

A Monkey Plays Percussion In Satan's Orchestra.



Despite the creative title this is not a work of fiction, but an opinion on one of the villains from Pixar's Toy Story 3. For those of you who have seen the film, and I'm sure most of you have, you might remember the cymbal-playing chimp who monitors Sunnyside Daycare after hours. The matted fur, the bulging blood-shot eyes, and that scream that could shatter crystal, were all combined as this freakish little primate crawled out of the bowels of hell and onto our big screen; make this creature about twenty feet tall and we are ready for a truly terrifying experience.

Why do I bother to rant about all this? Because I recently took my three year-old daughter to see this highly anticipated feature. While I loved the rest of the film, having to hold my trembling little girl while she said "Dad, I don't like that monkey, he's a little scary" over and over tarnished the experience a bit. With that first piercing scream she was scared to death that the monkey was going to come back and get her. The only relief she got was the reassurance I gave her that Woody had tied up the monkey and he wouldn't be coming back. Then the devil-ape showed up again in the end and Pixar made a liar out of me. Oh sure they tried to tone it down by putting him in cheezy 1980's sunglasses, but if you put the devil in baggy shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, he's still the devil.

Once again, I have to say that I loved the film overall, and I will probably purchase it for my family after it's release on video; however, I know that, despite the family friendly nature of this picture, I will inevitably hear a shout from the living room "Dad! I want to skip the monkey part! It's a little scary!" then I will stop what I'm doing, and with a sigh wonder why the Pixar animators couldn't have used a He-Man action figure to monitor Sunnyside instead of Bobo the the Hell-spawned Chimp.

3 comments:

Kathy Badger said...

These were my same feelings I had when I was a child and saw the flying monkeys on The Wisard of Oz! They still scare me! Eeek!!! They are a bit too human-like to like them.

Harper said...

This post made me laugh because the descriptions were great! However, I agree that the monkey was freaky. Our little guy is too young to "appreciate" the frighteningly real ape creature, but Tyler and I definitely got spooked! This post also reminded me of childhood fears, namely the wheelers from RETURN TO OZ. I just got the chills. CREEPY DOT COM!

Have you seen CORALINE? We don't recommend it. It's a 10 on the scary scale.

Lemonpeel said...

hahahaha! sooo funny, and SO true! That monkey was creepy mc-creeperton. poor reese!