Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie (2023) is a lot like an extra-long episode from the famous Monk series of its derivation. The private detective Monk’s unstable grip on reality has begun to slip due to the isolation introduced by the Covid 19 pandemic response, but this really reveals Monk’s ongoing central tragedy of his life: the horrific death of his wife at the hands of criminals who were targeting Mr Monk himself during his time as a policeman. This mental degradation results in the loss of a book contract and consequent need to return the advance he’d been paid, and Monk sinks deeply into an existential gloom.
In the midst of this, his wife’s daughter, his stepdaughter, is getting ready to marry, and the celebration was to be funded by Mr. Monk. In a turn to the worst, the groom is journalist Griffin Briggs, but then he dies in a bungee jumping accident – or is it?
The story becomes the struggle between gloom and accident, and scant evidence that Briggs was murdered. As we follow along in Monk’s scrambled wake, we encounter many Monk characters from the past. Keep your scorecard handy.
But we’re not talking about an old villain, but someone new! Who can it be? Look for the biggest ego out there. Yes, it’s all a little bit too convenient, but the ego that may be necessary to do really big things is plausible for someone to engage in murder, and so it’s not entirely ridiculous, just a little bit too, oh, obvious. But that leads to a series of clever maneuvers which I did enjoy.
Is it good? Monk has always been a matter of taste, with an appeal more for audiences with a taste for the sympathetic oddball. Parts of the script could have done with a bit of polishing, as at least some of the characters out of the past were a bit too noodle-headed for my taste. The acting seemed fine, on the other hand, and the plot complexities were on the same order as episodes from the series. I confess the supernatural, or delusional, aspects of the plot were annoying – but that’s just me.
Not great, not awful. Good luck to Mr. Monk in the future.
