Film Review : Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round (2024)

Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round, after premiering in 2024, finally landed on Screambox this year. Following movies that appear similar to it, Monkey’s Magic stays on a one track lane that both hurts and harms it.

James Jensen (Michael Gilio) plays a Mr. Rogers type character here with his merry band of puppets lead by a monkey with human hands. On an episode though about forgotten memories Jensens memories soon start to trickle back in leading down a darker rabbit hole into his past.

The film here truly commits though. Jensen feels like the host of a show of this nature. The set design, look, and everything in between feels like a PBS type era show you’d watch. It never breaks to even show us a camera crew or the puppets breaking to show us that a show is happening. This all plays out as if this is just an episode going terribly wrong.

As we get lessons throughout the episode though they begin take darker and often more gory twists though as we learn more about Jensens past.

My main issue here though is this is just a lot to stretch into a feature length film. Gilio does a fantastic job here leading what is pretty much for most of it as a one man gig. The gore is good, set looks great, but its often times sort of slower and has a boring slump to it. I never felt super invested even when I was digging it just because the ride to get there never felt truly exciting enough.

If this was half the time or even shorter I think they could have really done something with it. While it isn’t bad at all and I can see a lot of people really digging it, the niche-ness of it and the mid film slump is going to turn a lot of people off of it.

Score :

2 / 5