COW MONKEY, the 2001 sequel to FISHING WITH GANDHI, is aesthetically more pleasing than the original. The camera-work is more professional, and the sound quality is lusher. What remains the same are Roy and Gil, the Reichmuth anti-heroes who are the highlights of each film.
The allegedly improvised persiflage of the brain-fried duo is as satisfyingly hilarious as in the first film. The brothers excel at non-sequiturs, partial-sequitors, fractional-sequitors, word salad, allusive chaos, brand-name mayhem, partial-birth recidivism, and upside-down blood fountains of verbal enmanglements. They're funny as hell. The Roy & Gil universe is parallel to our own but twisted in ways that brilliantly resemble the quotidian misunderstandings of the normal world outside. Here, the anthropologist and the bigfoot photographer are perfect straightmen for Roy & Gil. The interactions of the foursome are nearly as funny as the solo scenes with Roy & Gil alone.
My favorite sight gag is the recurring image of bigfoot wandering behind the oblivious characters in the foreground. Other highlights are the destruction of the ceramic Rotweiler, the dictaphone singing of the anthropologist, and Roy's ongoing analysis of the mythical pee howler.
Though not as manic as FISHING WITH GANDHI, COW MONKEY is more deliberate, more complex, and is musically better scored. Fans of the Reichmuth twins can look forward to further cinematic misadventures, which I await with wild enthusiasm. (I'm anticipating an introduction to Wanda III.)