Howard Hawks (1952)
It depends for its laughs on the comic charm of a chimp and, to a much greater extent, on the effects of a rejuvenating formula on a middle-aged scientist, his wife and, eventually, other people in the lab where Barnaby Fulton (Cary Grant) is trying to find the chemical guarantee of eternal youth. The chimp proves highly dependable: the sequence in which s/he works open the door of the cage, gets out and sits on a lab stool sampling and mixing the liquids on offer there (it’s the monkey, not Barnaby, who comes up with the ingredients for rolling back the years) is the best in the film. The (uncredited) chimp looks for all the world like a skilled naturalistic actor with lovely comic timing. The human beings who become young again (then infantile) are the problem – although Cary Grant, at least until he’s asked to turn into a kid pretending to be a red injun, is witty and charming. Ginger Rogers plays his wife: it’s harder to decide if she’s more or less annoying under the influence of the elixir. Rogers is unarguably proficient but self-consciously so; as a result, she’s also completely unfunny. By contrast, Marilyn Monroe, as the sweetly dim secretary of the lab boss (Charles Coburn), gives the film a lift each time she appears. The (real) kids playing cowboys and Indians include a boy called George Winslow with a rasping old man’s voice. The script is by Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer and I A L Diamond, although you wouldn’t guess it. I don’t know how ‘Hawksian’ auteurists consider the movie to be. Without access to the formula the monkey in the movie comes up, I think life’s too short to find out. At the end, you feel relieved they don’t make ’em like this anymore although you have to concede that Monkey Business is over a good bit sooner than Benjamin Button was.
31 October 2012
