Such a frustrating disappointment

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Okay I really like some of the Marx Brothers movies and there are some I don't like so much. As you can see from summary I am not thrilled with this one. It is okay but I personally did not laugh to many times. The best I can say is tried, true, but cute. They do the usual routines, running around trying to pull off a play that has no financial backing, the cast of 22 free loading at the hotel along with the Brothers and a couple of others, and then there is the company man who has come out to straightened the hotel out and finds that they have run up a $1200 debt. They were allowed to get credit because the manager is Groucho's brother in law. Groucho's sister is played by Lucille Ball but her role has no humor in it, she just plays it straight.

OK, but not great, Marx Brothers movie. Started off well enough. Set up was good, some good one-liners from Groucho and was quite coherent. Middle section had some great sight gags (anything involving the turkey, and Harpo being diagnosed by the doctor, especially). However, from a point it lost coherence and just got silly. Not ridiculously, unwatchably silly, but just mundane and not too funny.Overall, the jokes were weaker than their best, and even Groucho's famous wisecracks seemed weaker and fewer-and-further-between. Performances, given the material, are OK though. Lucille Ball is great in a supporting role, and not just for her acting... Good support too from Ann Miller and Frank Albertson. Certainly not in the same league as A Night At The Opera, but reasonably entertaining nevertheless.

This is a fine comedy made in 1938, in the midst of that dazzling time in Hollywood when all of the studios were making what were to become classic films. This is one of the better ones, although not at the top. It's zany and unpredictable, and the Marx brothers are their usual selves. The unsung hero in the film is Donald MacBride, whose "slow-burn" humor graced many fine movies of the period. He's a hotel executive here, trying desperately to get Groucho and company to pay their hotel bill. The plot revolves around attempts to hoodwink him. Ann Miller and Lucille Ball have minor roles, which they both handle well. (Miller was only 19.) No, this is not up to the standard set by the Marx brothers in the early 1930s, but Room Service is well worth one's time.

As was pointed out by another reviewer, the Marx Brothers were languishing at the MGM studio under Louis B. Mayer because they had been brought there by his rival, Irving Thalberg. There last film had been A Day At the Races and they were idle for over a year when RKO requested their services for Room Service. Which L.B. Mayer gave them I'm sure for a good price.Room Service is a fast moving slapstick farce which the Marx Brothers adapted easily to. There's even a Zeppo part which in this case is filled by Frank Albertson as the naive kid from Oswego who wrote the play that Groucho is trying by hook or crook to get produced. Emphasis on the latter.Room Service ran for 500 performances on Broadway in the 1937-1938 season and the great George Abbott directed it. Here he was the supervising producer and I'm sure credited director William Seiter served under some real strict supervision. Frank Albertson's role was played by Eddie Albert and the three Marx Brothers parts were played by Sam Levene, Phillip Loeb, and Teddy Hart. Loeb who had Chico's role in the Broadway show played the bill collector trying to get $42.00 on Albertson's typewriter. Well money stretched a lot farther in 1938.Repeating their Broadway roles were Alexander Asro as the waiter with ambitions to be an actor and Cliff Dunstan as Gribble the hotel manager who is Groucho's brother-in-law. And of course Donald MacBride who had the slowest burn in film next to Edgar Kennedy and could get exasperated faster than anyone else on screen is Dunstan's boss. MacBride usually gets as many laughs as stars do in their films and Room Service is no exception. JUMPING BUTTERBALLS.The key to the whole plot is the fact that a big backer of Groucho's show pulled out and stopped payment on a $15,000.00 check. But the bank is in California and it took five days for the stop payment to go through. That was interesting to me because in the film Catch Me If You Can, forger/confidence man Frank Abegnale played by Leonardo DiCaprio used that exact same gimmick in the sixties to get a whole lot of money by memorizing codes for routing on checks. Was Abegnale inspired by Room Service?Favorite scene, the Marx Brothers and Albertson chasing a turkey through their room that Harpo finagled. Favorite line belongs to Frank Albertson which is ironic with Groucho Marx in the same film. When they decide to fake the fact that Albertson is dying, Albertson says that, "I'll give the best performance you'll ever see in a hotel room."How did that one get by Mr. Breen?