Sunlight (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

Sunlight

SUNLIGHT (2024)

Starring Nina Conti, Shenoah Allen, Bill Wise, Estrella Avila, Asha Bee, Melissa Chambers, William Troy Ford, Rachel Kylian, William Sterchi, Dyron C. Thompson, William Ford, Bourke Floyd, Kyle Overstreet, Andrew Lutheran, Josh Browner, Eddie Velez, Lauren Poole, Bennett Foskey, Lontrell Anderson and Jeff Gonzales.

Screenplay by Nina Conti & Shenoah Allen.

Directed by Nina Conti.

Distributed by Sunrise Films. 96 minutes. Not Rated.

It would seem to be hard to take a film seriously when one of the two lead characters spends almost all of her time in a monkey suit. Yet, despite the fact that it is a comedy and can be very funny, Sunlight is a film that must be taken seriously, with many dark pathways and rather tragic circumstances. It may seem like an absurd situation, or some kind of furry fantasy, but there is a well of pain and neuroses behind the glassy black monkey eyes.

And, oddly, Jane the monkey (played by the director, comedian and ventriloquist Nina Conti) is not even the most disturbed person in Sunlight. In fact, in her own strange way, she seems to be the most in touch with herself of anyone in the film.

She meets Roy (co-star and co-writer Shenoah Allen) – her companion in this oddball road trip film – as he is trying to hang himself at a motel where she works. The costume is sort of a mascot for the motel, but it also has the additional benefits of allowing Jane to hide herself from the world and also turning on her controlling and vaguely psycho boss and boyfriend Wade (Bill Wise).

When Jane sees Roy hanging from the noose in the hotel room, she breaks in and cuts him down and takes his trailer and drives off with him – seeing what happened as a way of escaping her life and saving his. Roy is somewhat put off having been saved when he comes to inside the trailer – particularly by a life-size driving monkey – but she sticks around because he seems to still be considering suicide. She also wants him to give her a ride to Colorado.

He asks her to come with him to dig up his father’s body, to get a $20,000 watch with which he was buried. He offers to share the profits with her, so they can both start their lives anew. Eventually these two very damaged people find a kindred spirit and friend in the other.

For most of the film she never seems to take off her costume (well, sometimes the suit comes partially off, but almost never the mask) – because she says, she hasn’t made any bad choices since she put it on. Eventually Roy gets used to it, even saying that she is very cute and soft. However, she is determined to try to keep things as asexual as possible – she feels that her human self always got in trouble when she indulged in the flesh.

It seems like a nearly impossible task, but Conti (who is best known for working with Christopher Guest, who is the executive producer here) is actually able to pull off some surprisingly subtle and touching acting completely hidden under all that fur. And Allen, her long-time comic partner, makes his sad-sack character much more interesting and relatable than he would seem to have a right to be.

It's a very delicate balancing act, and sometimes it gets really weird, but it works more often than not. Sunlight is a strange trip, but it is often surprisingly engaging.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: June 6, 2025.