Spanking the Monkey (1994)
Directed by David O. Russell
Bright young student Raymond Aibelli is forced to sidetrack an important medical internship because his mother, Susan, is recovering from a broken leg. When he isn't tasked with the most mundane aspects of Susan's recuperation, Raymond finds distraction in a neighborhood girl, Toni Peck. But, as Susan begins relying on her son for both physical and emotional needs, Raymond starts developing disturbing and unwanted new yearnings.
12 connections found
View:
12 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Spanking the Monkey to
From Spanking the Monkey to The Fighter, Russell observes the troubled soul within the environment that causes most of the damage — the family — which he details down to the dinner table spats and the ugly wallpaper in the living room.
Based on a novel by Matthew Quick and adapted for the screen by Russell himself, Silver Linings Playbook is an unfussy, rambling crowd-pleaser that recalls elements of the filmmaker's past work: the New Age coachings of the existential detectives in I Heart Huckabees, the back-in-your-childhood-home set-up of Spanking the Monkey and the chaotic regional family flavor of The Fighter.
As he did in early works such as Spanking the Monkey and Flirting With Disaster, the director profitably mines deep veins of insecurity and compulsion.
With a résumé including "Spanking the Monkey," "Flirting With Disaster," "The Fighter" and now "Silver Linings Playbook," director David O. Russell is becoming to freaky family dysfunction what Scorsese is to the Mafia.
Following a detour into heavy drama with The Fighter, David O. Russell returns to his distinctive brand of neurotic screwball comedy, and like his early features Spanking the Monkey (1994) and Flirting With Disaster (1996), this one somersaults giddily from sanity to insanity to sanity again.
In such early films as "Spanking the Monkey" and "Flirting with Disaster," director David O. Russell depicted dysfunctional relationships with a keen eye for their darkly comedic potential.
But a documentary about the making of the film also included on the DVD, as well as Russell's own video journal, shows a different filmmaker: a cocky, inexperienced brat who found $40 million for a film with only two low-budget indies behind him ("Spanking the Monkey" and "Flirting With Disaster") and a killer script in his hand.
Now comes "Three Kings," fashionably-directed by acclaimed indie filmmaker David O. Russell (1994's "Spanking the Monkey," 1996's "Flirting With Disaster"), which is not your usual war picture, and about as far as could be from something akin to Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan."
The style also complements Russell's screen-writing, which is still as character-obsessed as "Spanking the Monkey" or "Flirting With Disaster," only now it's the characters' content that matters as opposed to their neurotic dysfunction, suggesting Russell has learned to stop worrying and just ride the SCUD, Slim Pickens-style, into oblivion.
Director David O. Russell’s ( Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster ) film is much more than just your average action movie, as it compiles dark themes with light-hearted humor in an entertaining yet frightful odyssey of three American soldiers and the complications of the Gulf War.
Writer-director David O. Russell, who scored independent success with Spanking the Monkey and Flirting With Disaster, here moves confidently into the Hollywood mainstream, enlivening it with his original vision.
Writer-director David O. Russell, heretofore best known for the idiosyncratic indies Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster, establishes a quirky sense of humor in the film's lighthearted early treasure hunting stages, then midway shifts gears into a thoughtful--but never heavyhanded--examination of the post-war plight of the Iraqi people.
Director David O. Russell has exhibited contempt for his characters before with “I Heart Huckabees,” “Three Kings,” “Flirting with Disaster” and “Spanking the Monkey.”
…light welterweight boxer Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), unless you count Melissa Leos car-alarm turn as Mickys Mommie-Dearest manager as an expressive addition to Russells gallery of kooky materfamilias (Alberta Watson in Spanking the Monkey, Mary Tyler Moore in Flirting with Disaster).
As fiery dysfunction goes, "Spanking the Monkey" and "Flirting With Disaster" were clearly just a warm-up for Russell.
Something of a stylistic detour for director David O. Russell (Spanking The Monkey, I Heart Huckabees, Three Kings), The Fighter has a busy, nervy style, which oscillates between the comic and the potentially tragic.
She's more than a little reminiscent of such past Russell mother/terrors as Mary Tyler Moore in 1997's "Flirting with Disaster" and, dare I say it, Alberta Watson in his ultra-squirmy Oedipal debut, 1994's "Spanking the Monkey."
The director of such notable films as "Spanking the Monkey," "Flirting with Disaster," and "Three Kings" lost credibility due to his obscenely dull and overrated 2004 film "I Heart Huckabees."
The other characters you may recognize are Jeremy Davies (Spanking the Monkey -- he has about 4 lines), Alan Ruck (Speed, Ferris Bueller's Day Off) and Jamie Gertz (Less Than Zero, The Lost Boys).
Advertisement
If, nearly 30 years ago, "The Graduate" was shocking in its portrayal of a May-December affair, "Spanking the Monkey," which is a sort of a '90s riff on that earlier film, raises the stakes by dealing with masturbation and incest.
THE REBELLIOUS '60s had "The Graduate," the yupwardly mobile '80s had "Risky Business."
The comedy parts, which are supposed to be Russell’s forte since his 1994 feature-length debut in Spanking the Monkey, turn out to be shockingly unfunny for the bulk of the movie’s running time.
Written, co-produced and directed by David O. Russell ( Joy ; American Hustle ; Silver Linings Playbook ; The Fighter ; I Heart Huckabees ; Three Kings ; Flirting with Disaster ; Spanking the Monkey ).
His debut, “Spanking the Monkey” (1994) roiled literally in the Oedipal; “Three Kings” (1999), semi-famous for George Clooney and the director rankling each other, was one of my favorites of the 1990s; the locally shot story of Micky Ward in “The Fighter” (2010) was a gritty something-else for Russell; and then there was the almost-never-released “Accidental Love” (2015), an Affordable Care Act satire starring Jessica Biel as a waitress who gets a nail stuck in her head (the original title was “Nailed”) and experiences nymphomaniacal impulses.
Clerks , Spanking the Monkey , and Pulp Fiction were all released in 1994, clearing a path for dozens of low-budget features to follow.
Russell’s take on domestic life has never been straightforward (his 1994 debut, Spanking the Monkey, was a brisk tale of mother-son incest) and the new film is yet another ambivalent family portrait.
Russell's films — from 1994's Spanking The Monkey through 2012's Best Picture nominee Silver Linings Playbook — have often obsessed over toxic, intrusive family members, and the protagonists struggling to keep them at arm's length without cutting contact entirely.
His first films ranged from an angry, depraved coming-of-age tale (“Spanking the Monkey”) to a Desert Storm “Wild Bunch” of sorts (“Three Kings”) and a quirky little ditty that seemed stolen from the vault of Wes Anderson (“I Heart Huckabees”).
His earlier works — including “Spanking the Monkey,” “Flirting with Disaster” and “Three Kings,” plus the great “I Heart Huckabees” — were critical darlings that only slightly connected with the mainstream.
Much has already been made about the fact that Russell — always a fan of sharply written, exuberantly played female characters, going back to “Spanking the Monkey” and “Flirting With Disaster” — has now written and directed his first picture centered wholly around a woman.
Advertisement
But David O. Russell -- the agent provocateur who gave us sexual angst in Spanking The Monkey, and whose 1999 dramedy Three Kings remains the best film about war of the last decade -- has fun on his mind, and the wacky comedy he devises around the eternal questions of life goes by the philosophically unassuming title of I HEART HUCKABEES.
David O. Russell begin filmmaking life with his off-beat incest comedy, “Spanking the Monkey,” then went on to his journey of search and discovery of one’s roots in “Flirting with Disaster.”
But Russell (who made "Spanking the Monkey," "Flirting With Disaster" and "Three Kings," all terrific in different ways) and co-writer Jeff Baena lack Anderson's effortlessly smart wit.
Well, according to co-writer and director David O. Russell ("Spanking the Monkey," "Flirting With Disaster," "Three Kings"), they are private investigators who try to sort through and make sense of the seemingly random events that happen to all of us.
Russell, the gifted director of "Spanking the Monkey," "Flirting with Disaster" and "Three Kings," is clearly in an existential mood here — this screwy screwball is filled with lines like "You can't deal with my infinite nature," "He called with his own existential conundrum," and "Have you ever transcended time and space?" (To the latter, an anxious Albert bluffs "Time, not space.")
David O. Russell's debut feature Spanking the Monkey now bears the mark of Kane.
THE REBELLIOUS '60s had "The Graduate," the yupwardly mobile '80s had "Risky Business."