Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

'Monkey Business' is typical Howard Hawks' screwball comedy that unfortunately starts to show it's age. When it comes to slapstick comedy then Howard Hawks is one of the finest in that genre, but 'Monkey Business' might not be his greatest anymore, especially compared to 'His Girl Friday' which is maintained it's wit and sharpness besides all the slapstick, and compared to 'Bringing Up Baby' it feels too repetitive. Cary Grant is typically charming and his comedic timing is spot on. Together with Ginger Rogers, whose transitions into teenage girl were just adorable, these two compose a lovely couple whose adventures you follow on the edge of your seat.With other two movies I mentioned 'Monkey Business' offers many chuckles and laugh and guaranteed cure for depression.

I guess there's a fine line between screwball comedy and slapstick. This one came down a bit more on the slapstick side once it got going and left me somewhat unsatisfied, even with the caliber of players in the lead roles. Cary Grant was a veteran of these kinds of pictures, but for a better definition of 'screwball', you'd have to check him out in "Bringing Up Baby" or "His Gal Friday", both from a decade earlier.Something occurred to me as I watched this and I never mentioned it before, but there's always a first time. Have you ever noticed, no matter how big the star or their celebrity appeal, it all seems to go by the boards when they step into a 1950's era kitchen and the appliances make things feel so outdated. That's the first thing that hit me when the Fulton's (Grant and Ginger Rogers) entered their home for the first time. Not that it bothers me because that's just the way things were, but it's something of a shocker when you see it today considering all the modern gadgetry we have available now. Just an observation.Now Marilyn Monroe, it didn't help her real life persona to be cast in a role like this because she had to carry that dumb blonde personality around all throughout her short career. If she had gotten more roles like the her character Roslyn Taber in "The Misfits", well, who knows, her self esteem might have taken her on an entirely different course. As it is, we'll never know.So getting back to the story, we come to find out that at least in this case, the old fountain of youth is not all that it's cracked up to be, especially when monkeyshines are involved. Speaking of which, I wish the chimp who performed here was credited for the role, it had the best facial expressions of any I've ever seen, and that would include Cheeta from all those Tarzan flicks of old. You know, Cheeta lived to the ripe old age of seventy nine, so when Barnaby described 'Rudolph' as being eighty four, the writers wouldn't have been too far off the mark. But then again, they had 'Esther' on screen, so who would ever know?After all the hi-jinx, the story finally comes around to the message we probably all were waiting for, that is, the idea expressed in my summary line delivered by Barnaby Fulton. Another way of expressing it would have been the way Barnaby replied to Miss Laurel (Monroe) when she asked him if his motor was running - "Is yours?"

It's a matter of opinion, but you could say that Howard Hawks closed out the classic Screwball Comedy period with MONKEY BUSINESS the way that Orson Welles closed out the Film Noir movement with TOUCH OF EVIL. For Cary Grant, his research chemist in MONKEY BUSINESS is practically a continuation of his archaeologist in Hawks's earlier BRINGING UP BABY. There are also animals playing important roles in the plots of these films, but otherwise the movies are very different. MONKEY BUSINESS is something of a one joke fantasy (a chimp concocts a fountain of youth mixture), but this one joke is played out as an elaborate and building 'theme and variations' which is often inspired even if it does go on a bit too long. The film advances steadily, if that's not a contradiction, into ever crazier territory, beginning with an underplayed deadpan scene between absentminded scientist Grant and his patiently understanding wife Rogers and progressing into the crosscut surrealism of Grant's 'scalping' of his rival while leading a band of child 'Indians' while Rogers is mistaking an infant for her husband! It's not to everyone's taste, but catch it in the right mood and this is downright hilarious.If Cary Grant wasn't the finest light comedian that film has ever produced, he was extremely close. He plays confused like no one else, and MONKEY BUSINESS is inconceivable without him. Ginger Rogers also was an expert hand at verbal wit as well as slapstick, and an old hand at comically playing younger than her actual age. She may have gone over-the-top in places, but she also provided many funny moments. Marilyn Monroe was expert at playing dumb blondes and thus is perfectly cast, and Charles Coburn is always a welcome face in a movie.MONKEY BUSINESS was something of a disappointment at the box office, though not the utter disaster that BRINGING UP BABY had been, and perhaps for this reason Howard Hawks always expressed dissatisfaction with it. Never one to take the blame for inadequacies, he seems to have singled out Ginger Rogers as his 'whipping girl' for this one. Hawks had wanted the younger Ava Gardner to play Cary Grant's wife and Grant had vetoed it, not wanting to have love scenes with an actress young enough to be his daughter (a common occurrence in movies of the fifties, including Grant's movies). Casting the 41-year-old Rogers was Grant's suggestion, and though Hawks acquiesced, multiple sources tell us that he treated her coldly during the shoot. His claim that she dictated disastrous changes in the script is doubtful to say the least as Ginger Rogers in 1952 had no power to dictate anything to either Howard Hawks or to any film studio. In my opinion, Hawks was lucky to have her.MONKEY BUSINESS isn't the best movie that any of its principals were involved with, but it remains entertaining 64 years after it was made. A fitting end for the great Screwball Era.

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!