Bad Monkey Review: Vaughn’s Still Got It

Bad Monkey is a quirky, offbeat comedy that exposes greed, corruption, and comeuppance in South Florida while proving Vince Vaughn’s still got it.

Vince Vaughn is Andrew Yancy, a former Miami PD homicide detective on suspension for assaulting his lover’s husband after he (the husband) assaulted his wife. Yancy is a simple man who enjoys simple pleasures, “like a beer every now and then … and most importantly, a place to call home.” His happy place is a modest beachfront house in the Florida Keys surrounded by nature unharmed in its natural habitat—mostly. His real estate-agent neighbor just built an obnoxiously large, bright yellow mansion that “looks like it’s on coke”, and Yancy hates that it blocks his peaceful view.

Yancy is quite gregarious—a bit of a talker, full of wise-cracking charm, but then again, since Vaughn is playing our protagonist, you already knew that, didn’t you? His character here reminds me of his character in Swingers: It’s like Trent moved to South Florida and became a cop and still couldn’t get out of his own way. Yancy is the kind of guy who can’t (and doesn’t) let things go. He’s playful and coy, and, just like Trent, he’s THE KING of double talk. I couldn’t imagine anyone else bringing this character to life in such an authentic way. Vaughn is the magic in this series who breathes life into Hiaasen’s inimitable dialogue.

One day, a local fisherman reels in a severed arm assumed to be that of local con man and Medicare fraudster Nick Stripling, who is presumed to be dead either by fishing accident or shark attack. The local sheriff doesn’t want this news affecting the island’s tourism, so he tasks Yancy with delivering the arm to the Miami-Dade police coroner to let them handle the case. But there’s a problem: Yancy smells something fishy around how and why the arm parted from its host and as a result, he can’t let go of finding out the truth. If he can prove murder, he believes the local sheriff will rescue him from his disgusting Health Inspector gig and give him his old job back.

His search won’t be easy, though. Yancy must navigate an obstacle course of wildly unpredictable events with a crew of unpredictably strange characters, including his ex-lover Bonnie (Michelle Monaghan, of Mission: Impossible – Fallout), a hot-blooded fugitive from Kansas wanted for boning a minor; the selfish sociopathic, greedy wife of the severed arm, Eve (Meredith Hagner, of Search Party); two covetously optimistic real-estate speculators—one played by Saturday Night Live’s Alex Moffat; a Bahamian voodoo witch known as the Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith, of The Acolyte), whose suitors are blinded until death by her charms; Yancy’s new true love Rosa, a kinky coroner (Natalie Martinez, of Kingdom); and one eponymous bad monkey named Driggs.

The bad monkey title references both Driggs and Yancy, as both have quite the backstory and they’re similar in that they were both stars in their field whose light faded as a result of their own actions. Driggs was a former star of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies who got himself fired when he mistook an array of brown wigs for a monkey mate. He is also said to have been the official Rally Monkey of the Los Angeles Angels until “a scrotum-grooming reverie broadcast live on the stadium Jumbotron” ended that phase of his career.

Bad Monkey has a lot of strands full of information floating around in its story, and each strand is woven with its own individual chaos. In fact, there’s so much chaos mixed with greed and corruption that at times it feels a little daunting to keep up with, but the series does a nice job of keeping all those strands under one main umbrella and eventually tying them all together in a nice, neat little comeuppance bow.

You’ll notice the series is full of screwball chaos. This is because author doesn’t write serious novels about the human condition; hence, this is not a whodunnit mystery. There’s no mystery at all, really, and that’s where the beauty of the story lies. It doesn’t matter who the arm belongs to or who committed murders or who operates on greed and corruption or what’s real and what’s not. What matters is how the story is constructed, and this story is constructed well.

What I really liked about Bad Monkey was the clever writing—specifically all the witty banter. The entire story is narrated in the vein of The Big Lebowski, which I found to be both helpful and engaging. I also liked its thematic exploration of truth and guilt, and the effects of greed and corruption. It doesn’t always pay to lie because the guilt will eat you alive, the truth will always come out, and when it does, it’ll be stranger than fiction, and comeuppance will always find those who deserve it. Bad Monkey serves as a comical cautionary tale about going down a wrong path: It’s a lot harder to stop than it is to keep going, so it’s best just to avoid it altogether.

What I did not like at all was the soundtrack, which is made up almost entirely of Tom Petty covers. Don’t get me wrong: I love Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. It’s not the songs that bothered me; it was the fact they used covers that sound flat and weak and do absolutely nothing to carry or enhance the story in any way instead of using actual Tom Petty tunes. There’s no artist freedom in the cover that is supposed to represent what’s happening with the scenes and characters, and for that reason, the covers make the story feel empty and vapid. Now, the very last song of the series is an actual Tom Petty song, so maybe the covers were used to reinforce the oddball aspect of the entire story, or to reinforce a theme of facades. Still, the choice to use covers was not my favorite.

Overall, Bad Monkey makes for a worthwhile watch, one that will provide you with plenty of pretty views along with laughs and chaos to submerge yourself in for a weekend.

The first two episodes of Bad Monkey will be released globally on Apple TV+ on August 14, 2024. The remaining episodes will follow a weekly release, with the season finale out on October 9.

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