YMMV / Monkey Shines

• Catharsis Factor: It's quite satisfying when Ella electrocutes Allan's Abusive Mom Dorothy as her every second on screen seems to be devoted to making you cheer when Ella kills her.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: When Allan's finally able to kill Ella. The monkey attempts to use the same poison that was going to be used on her by Geoffrey to murder Allan's new girlfriend Melanie Parker, a specialist in quadriplegia and training helper monkeys, including Ella herself. Before Ella can get the needle into Melanie's body, Allan is able to summon the strength to move his right arm and engage his tape deck with romantic music that Ella likes and summons her to cuddle close to him. When Ella is under Allan's head, Allan bites her in the neck and kills her by thrashing his head back and forth in a repeatedly violent manner and snapping her neck before finally relinquishing his bite, causing her to hit his tape deck and desk before landing dead on the floor.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Given she is a Stepford Smiler, but also a mean spirited selfish Control Freak at the same time which surfaces when she refuses to take no for an answer or have Melanie look after Allan, some viewers interpret Dorothy possibly suffers from bipolar disorder.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Seeing Maryanne's grief over her death of her precious bird Bogey is much harsher in the real-life as Maryanne was played by Christine Forrest, the wife of the film's director George A. Romero and Romero passed away in 2017. Maryanne's Rage Quit as Allan's nurse also is harsher considering Forrest would decades later divorce Romero just seven years before his death.
  • Stanley Tucci's early role as this Slimeball Dr. Jerk responsible for his patient's debilitating state that takes away an important ability via handicapping now becomes tragic irony in light of Tucci revealing in 2021 to have been diagnosed with cancer three years earlier and had a tumor on his tongue that took away his ability to eat.
  • Jason Beghe would be involved in a major car accident himself in 1999. While he didn't become quadriplegic like his character, his vocal cords were damaged due to being intubated multiple times, resulting in his now-trademark gravelly voice.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Stanley Tucci plays a doctor who makes the physically fit protagonist weaker by paralyzing him, then in Captain America: The First Avenger, Tucci plays another doctor who inversely made a sickly protagonist stronger and physically fit by injecting him with a Super Serum.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Dorothy and Maryanne are way more despised than the film's actual Big Bad Ella.
• Moral Event Horizon: Dorothy crosses this when she mercilessly slaps around the physically helpless Allan and completely disown him as her son out of Never My Fault-related selfishness after the latter pressed her Berserk Button with his "The Reason You Suck" Speech. It's also implied at the time of her High-Voltage Death in the bath, Dorothy was plotting to either kick Allan of his own home to leave him to rot away and die of starvation somewhere in the middle of nowhere without anyone's knowledge or possibly even murder him and Make It Look Like an Accident out of If I Can't Have You… just to further retaliate against his opposition towards her.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • The movie's attempt at portraying Ella as scary backfires quite heavily because, well... are we seriously supposed to find a cute little monkey frightening?
  • The poster for the movie featured on the main page also looks unintentionally comical, despite how menacing it tries to look.
• Poor Man's Substitute: Despite being an overall Spiritual Successor to Jerry Fielding, music composer David Shire was the film's poor man's Henry Mancini, whom was originally supposed to composed the film's score.
• Retroactive Recognition: Jason Beghe is widely more known to audiences as "Chicago P.D.'s" tough-as-nails top cop Hank Voight. John Pankow also became much more prominent for his comedic turn in "Mad About You." We also can't forget the critically-acclaimed Oscar nominee Stanley Tucci, whose filmography since his turn as this film's egotistical Jerkass doctor speaks for itself.
• The Woobie: Allan, even though his bitterness from his accident makes him appear a Jerkass Woobie, he is a constant victim of Bullying the Disabled throughout the movie at the hands of his nasty acquaintances, including his Abusive Mom Dorothy.

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