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Created Apr 19, 2012 09:59PM PST • Edited Nov 24, 2018 08:58PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   A married Cary Grant being tempted by Marilyn Monroe is ample inducement to watch Monkey Business. Yet mere adulterous titillation undersells this sparkling marital comedy from the early Fifties. The movie centers on Grant’s loving relationship with his wife, played by a deft Ginger Rodgers. Gifted an inspired screenplay, these great stars induce several LOLs along with frequent periods of deep grinning.

   Screwball comedy is rarely so knowing or so deft, making the movie a treat even for fans who don’t usually favor such silliness. Aside from the marital playfulness, Monkey Business skewers corporate relationships and professional personas.

   Cary Grant and Ginger Rodgers getting fully in touch with their inner children while in the boardroom of a big corporation is particularly interesting from a 21st century POV.

   Two stellar behind-the-camera talents deserve equal credit as the stars: director Howard Hawks and screenwriter Ben Hecht. Their film stands as a thoroughly enjoyable lens into early Fifties America.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Ginger Rodgers gets robbed by Marilyn Monroe as the face of the movie, since it’s really Ginger’s movie with Cary Grant. Actually it’s really his movie with Ginger. That said, Marilyn does dazzle in her few scenes. Consider her opening line: She says her boss has been complaining about her punctuation, “so I’m careful to get here before nine.” Now that’s cute.

   Back to the star, Grant handles comedy better than most comic actors working today. It’s also a hoot seeing him mug as the effects of a designer drug take hold, especially given his real life dalliances with LSD.

   Ginger Rodgers’ loving wife is initially just OK, becoming a delight in the second reel when she lets her hair down and kicks up her heels. We know she’s a dancer, so it’s especially fun that she gets a chance.

   Back to Marilyn, she was just 26 when Monkey Business was made and looks quite young. Thus she was only a costar, appearing in maybe a quarter of the movie. However it set the template for her career, including the fact that she appeared here for the first time as a platinum blond.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

   Cary

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

   Ginger

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

   Marilyn

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The great Howard Hawks’ flowing, natural style and great timing results in a great comic film. His one break from naturalism comes in the opening scene, when Cary Grant is directed by an off-screen voice to go back in the house while the credits are rolling. The voice? Hawks himself. The effect? Instant charm.

    The screenplay nails several LOLs, but achieves its greatest resonance by setting up and playing out several comic tableaus. Credit this to perhaps the greatest screenwriter in Hollywood history, Ben Hecht.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    One of Howard Hawks’ best.

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.5

    Nudge and a wink.

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.3

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.2

    Aside from its evident surrealism – fountain of youth elixir, insane driving – the movie serves as a lens into early 1950s America.

    • Sexism: Marilyn’s secretary can’t type and is openly ogled.
    • Better Living Through Chemistry: Why not just mix up a chemical elixir and drink it down.
    • Animal Misunderstanding: Caesar, the super-chimp in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, wouldn’t be pleased with how the chimpanzees in Cary Grant’s lab are treated, even though they were well treated by the standards of the day.
    • Unlimited Confidence: Industrial progress was an unalloyed good and living large was the ideal in the movie’s idealized 50’s America.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.4

23. Biological Surreal 2.4

24. Physical Glib 1.7