Monarch of the Moon: 2006, dir. Richard Lowry. Seen on April 20, 2006 (Alamo South Lamar).
Monarch of the Moon was promoted earlier this year as a “lost” science-fiction serial from the 1940s, originally intended as covert WWII propaganda, that had recently been unearthed … but the film was actually shot in 2005. The hoax promotion was similar to that for The Blair Witch Project, but perhaps less successful. The movie is now being touted as a spoof of sci-fi serials from the 1940s. However, it seems to me that Monarch of the Moon doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it meant to be hilarious, or to invoke a gentle nostalgia for the films of that time? Is it supposed to be a faithful re-creation of the old serials? The film veers between a number of tones and as a result, drags and lags at times. Perhaps it would have worked more effectively as a shorter film.
The film focuses on the adventures of Yellow Jacket (Blane Wheatley), his secretary Sally and later her twin sister Maxine (Monica Himmelheber), and sidekick Benny (Brent Moss) as they fight Japanese invaders led by the mysterious Dragonfly (Kimberly Page). The characters encounter the usual serial-chapter perils: out-of-control airplanes, secret mountain lairs, and even outer-space creatures.
Monarch of the Moon is divided into six serial chapters, each one with its own cliffhanger. Perhaps if I’d seen the six chapters in front of five different features, as the old serials used to be shown, I would have enjoyed them more. Strung together, however, the storyline feels thin and repetitious, as though the script was stretched out to accommodate the artificial structure.
I liked the look of the film, which captured that Forties serial tone perfectly. The colors were nicely burnished and faded. Apparently the film was shot for about $80K with no CGI, but still had that Sky Captain look down perfectly. However, the filmmakers took the opportunity of re-creating a Forties serial to include many of the stereotypes from these serials that we might find offensive today. Sometimes they riff amusingly on the stereotypes, but they’re often still annoying: the secretary who can’t do anything right except scream a lot, Japanese villians played by non-Asian actors, American characters referring to Japanese and German enemies with racial slurs. The precocious little boy who always helps save the day is played by a grown man, which was funny in Forbidden Zone but gets old fast in this movie.
In addition, Yellow Jacket’s pro-American, anti-foreigner speeches sometimes sound a little too familiar to 2006 audiences … as though they’ve been lifted straight from a recent Presidential speech. It’s difficult to laugh at something that might have been intended as over-the-top when you just heard it on TV from the mouths of serious politicians.
The biggest problem with Monarch of the Moon is that it prioritizes authenticity more than spoofing. I would rather have seen the spoof use the serial idea as a foundation for outrageous comedy — maybe even leaving the serial structure behind and going somewhere else entirely. Some Zucker-style humor (Airplane) would have helped immensely. But the filmmakers have limited themselves in terms of structure and setting, so the humorous moments are few and far between.
Monarch of the Moon might play better on DVD than it did in a theater: you can always stop after one or two episodes and watch the rest another time. Individual episodes might be fun to watch before another feature. But as a whole, in a theater, Monarch of the Moon quickly turned into a light snooze with only the occasional laugh.