Utah theater fined for showing The Hangover Part II, with all its nudity and simulated monkey sex

By Sean O'Neal | September 30, 2011 | 6:53pm

Aux Features Film

Utah’s chief exports remain gold and silver, integrated circuits, and shame, as America’s scolding-est state is once again in the news for getting its temple garments twisted over sexually suggestive entertainment—this time The Hangover Part II, a screening of which ended up costing one theater more than $1,600 in fines. Salt Lake City’s Brewvies Cinema Pub, as its portmanteau suggests, serves beer with its cinematic offerings, meaning it must abide by the same liquor laws governing strip clubs, which forbid the mixing of alcohol with nudity, despite the two being made for each other. Unfortunately for them, the strip clubs are understandably bitter about that, which is why they complained to the state’s liquor enforcement team that the theater was somehow getting away with showing films featuring the reprehensibly naked female form in the proximity of alcohol.

And enforce they did: Brewvies received a fine that was $400 more than the offense of serving alcohol to a minor, all thanks to The Hangover Part II and its scenes of, as the Associated Press says, “female, male, and transvestite nudity,” adding, “Other scenes that violated state law included a monkey simulating a sex act.” Ah yes, the obscure but no less actionable Simulated Monkey Sex laws that have for too long been a reminder of our less enlightened past. When will we finally repeal those, and free our monkeys to simulate sex for our amusement? Where is our Frederick Douglass of simulated monkey sex? Not in Utah, that’s for sure.