‘Bad Monkey’: Vince Vaughn’s Comedy Is Extremely Florida (in a Good Way)
It’s been nearly 30 years since Vince Vaughn first exploded onto movie screens as Trent, the slick, confident best friend to Jon Favreau’s Mikey in Swingers, who was forever convinced that a trip to Las Vegas could solve any emotional problem. In the decades since, Vaughn has never lost that irrepressible presence, though some projects have taken better advantage of those gifts than others. Age comes for all of us, so it seems appropriate that in his latest role, as Florida cop Andrew Yancy in Apple’s Bad Monkey, he has matured just enough to warn someone that any Vegas excursion should be limited to a single night. But even allowing for the passage of years, Bad Monkey does as good a job of weaponizing Vaughn’s loquaciousness as any role he’s had since Wedding Crashers.
When we meet Yancy, his life seems to have fallen apart, but it soon becomes clear that this is more or less how it’s always been for him. He’s been suspended from the Key West police force after assaulting the abusive husband of his girlfriend Bonnie (Michelle Monaghan), and his partner Rogelio (John Ortiz) seems relieved to get a small break from Yancy’s shenanigans. His path to reclaiming his badge involves a series of mortifications, including a temporary position as the local health inspector, where he discovers just how disgusting a restaurant kitchen can be, and the odd task of trying to convince Miami coroner Rosa (Natalie Martinez) to take possession of a man’s severed arm that was caught by a tourist out for a fishing cruise in the Keys.
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To each and every job, Yancy brings enthusiasm and a relentless stream of bullshit. When Rosa catches him quoting the introductory narration to The Real World at her, he doesn’t miss a beat before replying, “In my defense, I thought you were too young to know that.” When an FBI official warns him that he needs to take things easier on a case, Yancy insists, “I’m still coming in hot, but this time I’ve added some disarming charm.”
Many of the people Yancy encounters find him exhausting, but Rosa is surprised to find herself unable to resist him, even after a friend warns her that Yancy is “a human anchor” who will pull her down with him. Viewers will almost certainly side with Rosa on this. It’s an incredibly winning performance by Vaughn, and the writing by Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence and others makes clear throughout that Yancy recognizes that he’s full of it, and the rat-a-tat is the only way he knows how to deal with the world.
Once upon a time, when Lawrence was running Scrubs, he became one of many producers who tried and failed to make a new adaptation of Gregory Mcdonald’s Fletch books, with Scrubs leading man Zach Braff set to star. Braff would have been all wrong for the part (and Greg Mottola finally made a wonderful Fletch movie, Confess, Fletch, with Jon Hamm, that unfortunately nobody saw a couple of years ago). In a way, Bad Monkey feels like Lawrence’s do-over, with Vaughn perfectly suited to bulldoze and banter his way through a comic mystery. (Braff, meanwhile, has a small but effective part here, as a disgraced former doctor with the colorful moniker of Israel O’Peele.)
But Lawrence has also very faithfully adapted the actual source material, a 2013 book by Carl Hiaasen. A one-time newspaper reporter, Hiaasen has a long and impressive bibliography of novels that tend to share the following elements: a South Florida setting, a wisecracking hero whose career has seen better days, loathsome real estate developers, and criminals to whom increasingly grotesque things happen over the course of each book. (In an early one, Skin Tight, the main goon gets a hand bitten off by a barracuda, and decides to attach a weed whacker to the stump.) Bad Monkey features all of those, plus its own wrinkles, including a large chunk of the plot taking place on a small island in the Bahamas where young fisherman Neville (Ronald Peet) has a pet Capuchin monkey named Driggs(*), and seeks help from local voodoo priestess the Dragon Queen (an incredibly charismatic Jodie Turner-Smith).
(*) Driggs is played by Crystal, the busiest monkey in show business, who’s been in everything from American Pie to Community to The Fabelmans. Despite the show’s title, Crystal doesn’t actually get a ton to do.
Hiaasen’s books seem perfectly suited for adaptation, yet it’s rarely happened. 1996’s Striptease was an infamous bomb, and prior to this, the only other one to make it to theaters was a 2006 take on his young-adult novel Hoot(*). Hiaasen’s absurdist tone has proven more elusive on screen than on the page; Striptease doesn’t work in large part because Demi Moore plays her role too seriously. But Lawrence, Vaughn, and the whole Bad Monkey ensemble understand the assignment. It’s not presented as a complete lark, and some of the best moments are when actors like Vaughn, Turner-Smith, and Rob Delaney (as a shady businessman in the thrall of the alternately flaky and ruthless Eve, well played by Meredith Hagner) acknowledge the heavy emotions that would be part of a plot with so much violence. But Lawrence, the actors, and the directors (led by Marcos Siega) are able to provide those scenes while allowing the series to be ridiculous at least 90 percent of the time. Bizarre things keep happening, and Bad Monkey relishes every last weird bit of it.
(*) Another of his books, Skinny Dip, was in TV development hell for several years, set up at various points at the CW, HBO, and… Quibi. Remember Quibi?
Gravelly character actor Tom Nowicki has a small role as a fishing boat charter captain, but is ubiquitous as our narrator, with two important responsibilities: 1.) To keep holding the audience’s hand through an increasingly nonsensical plot, and 2.) To capture the whimsical voice of Hiaasen’s writing. When Bonnie begins to flirt to get herself out of a bad situation, for instance, the narrator quips, “Ten bucks if you can guess what happened next.” Between all the voiceover and the frequent use of songs(*) by the Sunshine State’s own Tom Petty (many of them covers, but some by the late, great Heartbreaker himself), the whole thing feels extremely Florida, in the best possible way.
(*) Though the soundtrack is mostly Petty, there are a few distracting instances of songs famously used by other movies or shows, including The Wire, Pulp Fiction, and Anatomy of a Fall. But the show also finds ways to smartly quote Edith Wharton and Richard Russo, so it’s got references on its mind throughout.
The story has no business filling 10 episodes, which even Bad Monkey acknowledges on occasion: “I would probably get more emotional,” Yancy tells Bonnie after their latest on-camera split, “but that’s the fifth time you’ve said goodbye to me.” But Vaughn is so good, the entire cast of characters (which also includes Scott Glenn as Yancy’s laid-back dad, and Alex Moffatt as a developer with what Yancy describes as ” the most punchable face I’ve ever seen not on a golf course”) so much fun, and the vibes so strong, that the mystery very quickly becomes besides the point. The season covers the entire book, but the last scene leaves the door open for more adventures of Andrew Yancy. By that point, you may, like me, feel eager to spend more time with this fast-talking man and his surreal little corner of the world.
The first two episodes of Bad Monkey begin streaming August 14 on Apple TV+, with additional episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen all 10.
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