dougdoepke
Great screwball comedy with all the many monkeyshines. I'm still wondering how they got our distant hairy cousin to act out on cue so ably. I kept looking for a guy somewhere inside the monkey suit, but no luck. So why didn't this amazing Esther get co-star billing. Then again, the humans are in top form too, and I don't just mean just the curvaceous Monroe. Thanks to the liquid rejuvenator, Grant gets to change personality faster than his clothing, while a sober-sided Rogers can suddenly morph into a 12-year old break-dancer. But where were the cops when Grant and Monroe do a NASCAR rally all over LA streets. It may be a hair-raiser trip but it's a laugher anyway. I'm glad they didn't have Coburn and the oldsters acting like 12-year olds, otherwise someone's heart medicine would get a workout. I guess squirting water at each other was enough. No need to go on after so many detailed reviews, except to say aces all around from top to bottom. And please, oh please, send this geezer a vial of the good liquid stuff— after all, I still have my eye on Monroe.
Leofwine_draca
MONKEY BUSINESS is a madcap comedy starring Cary Grant as a short-sighted professor who's been conducting experiments into the intelligence of chimpanzees. One day, when he's out of his laboratory, unbeknownst to him a chimp escapes and pours his newly-made concoction into the water cooler. When members of his team and family begin to drink the concoction they experience a newfound youthfulness...Let's be fair: most of this film's enjoyment stems from an ever-professional Cary Grant, who shows that he's every bit as good at slapstick comedy as he is in other genres. Grant's transformation from a geeky scientist into a youthful playboy is a hoot and he delivers a straight-laced performance that fits perfectly with the production. The highlight comes late on in the proceedings when he plays Red Indians with a group of mischievous kids. It's a sublime moment.Elsewhere, the production falters a little with Ginger Rogers - who plays Grant's wife - asked to do increasingly stupid things for the camera. There's a great trick she pulls off with a glass of coffee, but when Rogers acts the kid it's pretty embarrassing, I have to say. Watch out for Marilyn Monroe, taking an early role as a sexpot secretary. Although MONKEY BUSINESS is rather a juvenile film, there are moments of slapstick and madness which equal Laurel & Hardy at the top of their game. Just a shame the tone wasn't more consistent...
TxMike
I found this movie on Netflix streaming movies. I happen to be a Chemist and that didn't help, because the Chemistry displayed here was very far from what might happen in a real Chemistry research lab. Anyway, to the story. As the movie starts and his wife is trying to get him out of the house, he is acting like he might be mentally challenged, but he is acting the part of an absent-minded scientist, deep in thought. Cary Grant is intelligent and inventive Chemist Dr. Barnaby Fulton. He is working on what could be the invention of the ages, a formula that would arrest aging, and perhaps even reverse it.The title has two meanings. Barnaby's lab is using chimpanzees, which they often referred to as "the monkeys", it was part of their research business. But the title also refers to the human "monkey business" that the characters seem to get into, over and over.Ginger Rogers is just great as the wife, Mrs. Edwina Fulton, and always very understanding and forgiving of Barnaby's foibles. Marilyn Monroe is also in it, as a typist who can't type, but her character introduces some additional high jinks. SPOILERS: Make no mistake, this is a slapstick comedy. Not only is Barnaby having trouble perfecting his formula, one day a chimp lets himself out of the cage, and proceeds to randomly pick up chemicals on the lab bench and mix them. The chemical mix ends up in the water cooler, and turns out to have the effect Barnaby was searching for. But with no witnesses and no idea what had happened, the chimp became an unwitting inventor of a technology that no one could duplicate. All the better for humanity, I suppose!
Dalbert Pringle
Monkey Business was very-Very-VERY bad comedy. This movie was garbage.Both of the aging actors, Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers gave terrible, "phone-in" performances. These 2 were a good part of the reason why this 1952 Comedy fell flat on its face into the muck of movies that are best left unwatched.Aside from the cast member of Esther, a mischievous, little chimp, it was Marilyn Monroe who was the only human actor worth any notice in this picture.Since it has been said that director Howard Hawks saw no talent in Monroe, she was wasted and reduced to playing the nothing-part of a clueless, blond, bimbo secretary who frequently showed off her legs and naively flirted with anyone in pants.This film has Esther, the chimp, (all alone in the lab) escaping from her cage (and imitating what she's seen the professor (Grant) doing), she starts mixing random chemicals together into a large beaker.As it turns out, this monkey's concoction of chemicals has a miraculous rejuvenating effect for which the professor has long been searching.Esther pours this mixture into the lab's water-cooler tank, and, it's at this point that (with everyone completely unaware of what Esther has done) all of the fun is supposed to start when the professor (as well as his wife) drink down the formula.Both Grant and Rogers put in such bad performances as the rejuvenated couple that this film's intended humor fizzled away long before it even got started.I can't believe that I actually wasted away 90 minutes of my time watching this very-Very-VERY bad garbage movie.
AD
