Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 5-January-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Monkey Business (1952)

I am a moviegoer who admires style at least as much as substance, which is probably why I am not a big fan of Howard Hawks. Although he made a number of popular movies in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s (e.g., "Sergeant York," "The Big Sleep," "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"), it seems to me that his "style" consisted in simply pointing the camera at attractive, talented stars working off a snappy script, with no frills or flourishes or attempts at cinematic artistry. Of course, these days you could go to a new movie every week and never see a talented star or a snappy script, so I'm not disparaging Hawks as much as you might think. It's just that his WYSIWYG pictures never really get under my skin, and I'm not sure how much he is to be credited with whatever success they achieve.

My latest sampling of Hawks is the 1952 comedy "Monkey Business," which, like "Bringing Up Baby" in 1938, features Cary Grant engaged in romantic hijinks caused by an animal on the loose. The always reliable Grant plays Barnaby Fulton, a brilliant chemist working on a youth elixir for a typical fat, cigar-chomping, capitalist boss named Mr. Oxly (Charles Coburn). Despite the fact that Barnaby wears nerdy glasses and works too much, he enjoys a perfectly perfect marriage with the sensible and sexy Edwina (Ginger Rogers), who keeps the home fires burning in every way imaginable. Heck, Barnaby is still so in love after years of marriage that he doesn't pay any attention to Oxly's buxom trophy secretary, Miss Laurel (Marilyn Monroe), even when she all but throws herself at him. However, after one of Barnaby's test chimpanzees gets out of her cage, mixes up her own elixir, and pours it into the water cooler, people start to regress into phases of their childhood. Barnaby and Edwina both succumb to the youth potion, with varying results, while the greedy Oxly tries to get his hands on the secret formula. Hilarity and confusion ensue, but in the end true love and good sense carry the day.

In addition to the general fun, there is a point to all the madness: that youth is not always what it's cracked up to be (or how we remember it), and that while there will always be succulent Miss Laurels to tempt discontented older men, there is great beauty in the familiar, comfortable, chummy romance that comes to fruition when two people are in love for a long time. This is nice stuff, and Grant and Rogers are very charming and very sweet together. Still, for every high point (Barnaby putting on war paint and getting the kids on his block to help him "scalp" his arch enemy), there is a low point (the long, dull sequence when Barnaby mixes a potion and then the chimp Esther does exactly the same). Unfortunately, the low points are highlighted by the fact that the film has no music (more of Hawks' sparseness), so when there's no talking (or shouting or giggling), there's no sound. Also, some of the behaviors supposedly brought out by the elixir don't make sense, which distracts from their comic effect (e.g., just because Edwina feels like she's 20 again, why would she become delusional and think she was a virgin on her wedding night?). As usual, Hawks lets the script and the cast do all the work, but in this case the script is not as interesting as, say, "His Girl Friday" (1940), and the cast includes a monkey and a baby, so the result is a little less satisfying. You wouldn't be bananas to watch this film, but you probably won't go ape over it.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.