Monkey Business [G]

Barnaby and Edwina Fulton are a happily married mature couple whose lives revolve around not attending parties and concentrating on Barnaby’s anti-aging formula that’s he’s currently testing on chimps. But their marriage and indeed their whole world gets turns the other way when one of the testing chimps breaks loose and concocts an incredible youth rejuvenating formula, which it then dumps in the laboratory water cooler. Suddenly, Barnaby and Edwina are acting like college kids and the more water they drink, the more childish they become. 

This is a very cute little screwball comedy whose title makes a joke of both the fact that it features monkeys and the kind of immature, reckless behaviour that has come to be known as ‘monkey business’. Not to mention that it stars Carey Grant who is the king of screwball comedy it has to be said! 

Barnaby and Edwina Fulton are a happily married mature couple whose lives revolve around not attending parties and concentrating on Barnaby’s anti-aging formula that’s he’s currently testing on chimps. But their marriage and indeed their whole world gets turns the other way when one of the testing chimps breaks loose and concocts an incredible youth rejuvenating formula, which it then dumps in the laboratory water cooler. Suddenly, Barnaby and Edwina are acting like college kids and the more water they drink, the more childish they become. 

From the opening credits in which Carey Grant tries to exit the house and gets told by a voice-over from the director “not yet Carey”, a very funny little metafictive element in its own right, this movie has you intrigued right from the off and keeps you in its grip with every new scene, mainly for the fact that you’re constantly putting your hands to your face going “oh no, oh dear, oh my goodness”. Screwball comedies are wonderful things like that, particular old-school classic screwball comedies, because they can make you squirm and twitch and grin like an idiot in a very schadenfreude-induced sort of way. 

Whilst this is more of a visual screwball comedy rather then the crackling dialogue driven ones such as Bringing Up Baby, it nevertheless works to deliver the laughs, titters, groans, and sighs of relief when everything (somehow) sorts itself out in the end. 

Carey Grant as a sometimes absent-minded chemist is very good, becoming funnier with each level of maturity he passes through! From mature adult to hot headed adolescent to Indian-calling child, he puts us on a delightful roller coaster of craziness that won’t stop, and let’s face it, would we want it to? 

Ginger Rogers as Edwina is the slightly spontaneous and wonderfully dutiful housewife that I can see myself being, still holding that slight flare of youthful recklessness, though not so reckless. When she retreats back through the years, it’s very funny, as she becomes more of a girl during adolescence and a tomboy during childhood. 

Starring Charlies Coburn, Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Marlowe, Henri Letondal, Robert Cornthwaite, Larry Keating, Douglas Spencer, and Esther Dale, Monkey Business is a classic little screwball comedy that delights. Filled with action, mistakes, hilarious misinterpretations, innuendo, and romance, it’s a great little feel-good flick, perfect for a light and lazy afternoon.