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‘Inside Monkey Zetterland’
By Desson Howe
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 03, 1993
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The pressure is mounting. Your lungs are nearly bursting to breathe. Bubbles -- the final signs of your fading oxygen -- escape from your sealed lips. The highlights and disappointments of your life flash by. You feel the end drawing near. If you're experiencing these symptoms, there are two possible explanations:x You're drowning. x You're watching "Inside Monkey Zetterland," Steve Antin's brat-packy, home-video-mundane, naval-contemplative debut about himself, his creative process and the famous friends he can fool into appearing in his new movie. For Sandra Bernhard's all-too-brief appearance, you can be grateful. For the remainder of this slice-of-life indulgence, which the producers refer to as a "breath of fresh air," you'd better strap on an aqualung. Antin, whose greatest attribute is a passing resemblance to George Stephanopoulos, plays the eponymous Monkey, a gentle, earnest guy working on a screenplay in Los Angeles. While he slaves away on this project (something about the defunct L.A. streetcar system), cliches disguised as characters constantly interrupt his muse. There's his family for starters, including neurotic mother and noodge (Katherine Helmond), a soap-opera actress constantly fearful (with good reason) she'll lose her acting job; gay sister Patricia Arquette, heartbroken that lover Sofia Coppola has become pregnant; and brother Tate Donovan, a bent-wristed hairdresser who talks personal trainers and mobile phones. Outside the family, Antin's neighbor Bernhard has an inexplicable crush on Our Great Writer and pesters him with Bernhardian commentary -- the only slightly amusing element in the movie. Churlish, eye-batting girlfriend Debi Mazar complains Antin isn't devoting enough time to her. Mysterious, sullen, activist-lovers Martha Plimpton and Rupert Everett, new tenants in Antin's building, act as if they're in a "Beverly Hills 90210" version of "Bonnie and Clyde." Then there's Ricki Lake, a sweet-and-nutso devotee of Antin's mother who skulks foreshadowingly around her idol's premises. You could say "Monkey" has narrative development, since the story segues from boring to ridiculous: After the characters have taken up most of the movie airing their idiosyncrasies, they undergo melodramatic fates that reveal little more than Antin's recession of an imagination. Throughout these hydrophobia-inducing proceedings, Antin plugs away at his screenplay -- which we get a regular taste of in voice-over narration and fantasy sequences. About Antin's work-in-progress -- and this movie in general -- I can say this with empirical confidence: Mediocrity is real scary up close.
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