If Sunlight worked even a quarter as well as it does, the movie would still have been something of a miracle. This is a feature film in which a distraught local radio personality strikes up a relationship with a woman who wears a full monkey suit—all of the time. He’s recently survived a suicide attempt; she’s fleeing an abusive relationship. So they hit the road. The result is funny, and touching. Sunlight’s limitations show—it’s the directorial feature debut of ventriloquist comedian Nina Conti, who also stars as Jane, the woman behind the mask—but nowhere near as glaringly as they should. From inside the dingy costume—its mouth operated by a device in the paw—Conti gives an alarmingly entertaining performance. “Monkey” is assertive, crude, and irrationally confident, all the things Jane can’t otherwise be. She also speaks in a vaguely British accent. Yet most of the humor comes from the physical details: Jane resting her head on the dashboard, Monkey’s dead eyes and benign face offering a Rorschach test for the viewer; Monkey unzipping just enough to pull out a flip phone; later dumping a bucket of ice inside the suit to cool off. At the same time, there is real pathos when we realize how severe the personality split between Jane and Monkey has become. (Monkey refers to Jane in the third person or as “the bitch in here,” blaming her for Monkey’s more impulsive acts.) Shenoah Allen, who is Conti’s creative partner in other pursuits and co-wrote Sunlight with her, co-stars as Roy, the radio personality. If he doesn’t quite have the charisma, in this part, to hold the big screen, his and Conti’s improvisational chemistry is key to many of the movie’s funnier moments, including an increasingly obscene road-trip song about holes. Together they’ve fashioned something I never thought possible: a cringe-free ventriloquism movie with genuine laughs and heart.
(7/14/2025)
