Release and Critical Reception
The film, produced by Tani L. Cohen and Chuck Grieve, debuted at the Toronto Film Festival on September 12, 1992, and was released to a very limited number of theaters in the United States in 1993. Donovan was nominated as best supporting male at the 1994 Independent Spirit Awards; the film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize (dramatic) at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. The film was released in 1994 on VHS and in 1995 on Laserdisc; it was finally released on DVD on February 6, 2007.
The film was generally well received by critics. Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle gave the film three stars, stating "These actors all create riveting snapshots of oddballs in action," but also noting the film has a "rambling storyline".1 These same characteristics that were praised in positive reviews were the same ones panned in negative ones, such as Desson Howe of The Washington Post who states: "After the characters have taken up most of the movie airing their idiosyncrasies, they undergo melodramatic fates that reveal little more than Antin's recession of an imagination." 2
The film did however cause a rift between real life brothers Steve Antin and Jonathon Antin as Jonathon was insulted over the film's close resemblance to their own family and how the character Brent Zetterland was depicted as vapid, vain, oafish and slow. However it is rumored that the two have since reconciled.
Read more about this topic: Inside Monkey Zetterland
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