You think you’ve seen all the variations on the road movie and then along comes Sunlight, about a suicidal man on a road trip with a woman in a monkey suit. With a giant monkey, in effect. Strange. Funny.
It’s written by its two leads, stand-up comedian Shenoah Allen, and Nina Conti, whose comedic ventriloquism act often involves a little monkey sitting on her arm and saying rude things to hapless members of the audience she’s dragged on stage.
That’s more or less what we have here, that naughtly little chappie but at Conti size rather than miniature, sitting next to Allen’s Roy and saying frank, awful, rude and disgusting things to him as they gun an Airstream RV across a desert landscape to dig up his dead father, remove an expensive watch from his skeletal arm and sell it for cash.
She saved his life after happening to see him through a motel window trying to end it all with a noose. But why is she in a giant monkey suit? Is she also trying to end something, evade something, or escape from herself? Of course she is.
There is a fairly redundant plot about them being pursued by her stepfather (Bill Wise) who owns the monkey costume and wants it back. But really it’s just two people talking as they drive to nowhere in particular to do nothing in particular, sharing confidences, getting to know each other, in as much as you can get to know a woman in a monkey suit who refers to the suit’s occupant – Jane – as “the bitch in here”.
That Conti and Allen manage to spin what is in effect a short stage routine into a feature-length movie is something of a triumph. And they do it without any feeling that they’re just spinning the wheels.
It works because it sets up a mystery about the mystery monkey woman. She claims she is “dead” beneath the mask and suit. That she’s a “big hairy dick trap” sick of the stupid relationships she keeps having with men. The tease is that she’s going to work through her woe, maybe by having a relationship with Roy, who is a mess all of his own making.
These two comedians well used to improvising riff off each other, and though most of it is scripted they regularly wander off piste in an attempt to make each other corpse. Conti has the advantage because she’s behind a mask. It’s Allen’s face we watch as Conti says things a well brought up woman (Hampstead – posh London – daughter of actors Tom Conti and Kara Wilson) would never say, forcing him to compress his lips, look away from the camera and inhale prophylactically.
It’s very funny and without getting portentous it says something about the way masks allow people to be more honestly themselves. It’s also nice. A dread word, but these two are OK people and as we get to know them it seems that, flaws and all, they deserve a second go at things.
Christopher Guest is an executive producer and Sunlight definitely has the semi-improv hallmarks of the films we associate him with – Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, This Is Spinal Tap – loose, funny, humane movies whose comedy springs from character.
If you’ve never seen Conti perform, she’s all over YouTube, where you can get a flavour of this film in a five-minute gobbet. But I urge you to see the full thing. Well worth 96 minutes of anyone’s time. Thoughtful and funny done well is pretty rare.
Sunlight – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2026
