"Monkey Business" Review

 

by Daniel White

Howard Hawks' 1952 Monkey Business (not to be confused with the vastly superior Marx Brothers film of the same name) is an inane, embarrassing trifle. A tiresome fountain-of-youth comedy, it's a major waste of some mighty Hollywood talent.

Cary Grant plays Barnaby Fulton, an absentminded scientist working on a serum that will restore vitality and turn back the clock. Nobody does bumbling befuddlement better than Grant and he emerges largely unscathed. Not the case with his onscreen wife, Ginger Rogers...

A talented, likeable actress, Rogers can come off as hard and invulnerable. Attempting to cavort about like an excitable teenage girl, she is not only unfunny, but uncomfortable to watch. Is it the actress? Could a Carole Lombard or Lucille Ball have elevated the humdrum material? Make it humorous instead of humiliating? Perhaps it's Mr. Grant's fault. A comic mastermind with his ability to turn the silly into the sublime, she looks flaccid and uninspired in his presence (it doesn't help that there is zero chemistry between the stars). Peter Bogdanovich once lamented that Marilyn Monroe, who has an amusing support part as a dumb blonde secretary, should have played Rogers' role. Certainly her brief scenes with Grant are fresher and funnier than anything Miss Rogers manages to conjure up.

Scripted by (among others) Ben Hecht and I.A.L. Diamond, helmed by the accomplished Hawks, and co-starring the gifted Charles Coburn, Monkey Business should have sailed. Instead it circles the drain and sinks. Produced by Twentieth Century Fox, Money Business is currently available on YouTube.