The case of "What Happened to Monkeybone?" is an irresistible one for cinematic detectives of all persuasions. Although it boasts a typically energetic, feverishly fun performance from lead Brendan Fraser, this big-budget comic fantasy has a severely truncated feel. Along with a suspiciously brief running time of less than 90 minutes and a major scene that is completely altered from the film's trailers and commercials, it becomes clear that the final cut of Monkeybone is a massive rejiggering of what was originally envisioned. While the funhouse vibe of director Henry Selick's previous works such as The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James and the Giant Peach (1996) is intact, the first act of this phantasm unfolds like the excised scenes from a director's cut, not the polished release version. The film's setting and characters are so rapidly set up (and in the case of actress Megan Mullally's character Kimmy, just as quickly dispensed with) that the audience is robbed of the joy of slowly discovering a bizarre new world with its own rules -- an important element of a sci-fi or fantasy tale. Fraser's Stu Miley becomes so immediately familiar with his surroundings and the overriding principles of his new existence that either poor writing or an irresponsibly random editing job must be to blame. What is left afterwards is so slack and lacking in set-up that the film plays like a series of punch lines with no preceding joke. It is said that a story is a series of promises that, in order to be effective, must be kept; Monkeybone seems to have been hacked apart so ham-handedly, it's impossible to even be certain what the promises were.