O Inventor da Mocidade

It's worth the price of admission to see Marilyn Monroe showing her leg to a nerdy Cary Grant early on, and then tool around with him in a sports car and go roller skating with him, which they do after he's taken a youth potion accidentally created by one of his lab chimps. As you might guess, there are some pretty silly things in the script, but it's a cute story, and to see Grant and Ginger Rogers carrying on as young adults and later children tickled me too. It seems to me that the film may have served as the inspiration for other films, like 'The Nutty Professor, and some of its content may have seemed fresher in 1952, but it's still entertaining because of this star power. In smaller parts, the performance from the chimpanzee is impressive, and I also liked child actor George Winslow, who deadpans his lines in that heavy voice of his. Lastly, it made me smile to hear Grant and Rogers alluding to rediscovering memorable nights of passion from when they were younger, in that restrained but sexy way of the period. There are some nice lines at the end too: "You're old only when you forget you're young. ... It's a word you keep in your heart, a light you have in your eyes, someone you hold in your arms."

_Monkey Business_ works if, and only if, you can buy the premise that a lab monkey, working behind the scientist's back, can produce an elixer that makes people young again and dump it into the lab's water cooler to watch the results. I find suspending disbelief here no problem, and the result is a wonderfully silly movie. Cary Grant is spot on as the absent-minded scientist, Barnaby Fulton. (The opening credit scene, which seques seamlessly from Cary being referred to as "Mr. Grant" by the off-camera director to Cary being Barnaby Fulton, is a classic in itself.) Ginger Rogers (Mrs. Fulton), is hardly credible as a scientist's wife, but she is brilliant whenever Mrs. Fulton is under the influence of the elixer. Monroe is effortless as the dumb blonde secretary wanting to have "fun" with the youthful version of Barnaby Fulton. Charles Coburn is perfect as the frumpy boss, Mr. Oxley. The comedy is in the situations and dialog that develop as the elixer is repeatedly unwittingly imbibed by Grant and Rogers, and then by others. I would rather not spell these out, but they are fully within the screwball comedy genre that goes back to the 1930's.

If you like good solid wacky comedy, this is a strong bet. An utterly silly movie, it makes me smile just thinking about it--I've seen it probably a dozen times. Cary Grant really was in a class by himself, managing to do virtually every genre, even though he seems to have been typecast by movie history--here he plays a hopelessly stuffy absent minded professor, after drinking a youth serum of improbable origin, he immediately becomes a teen ager from the early fifties. Changing on a dime, the transformation is hilarious.

Ginger Rogers, always really engaging, isn't give a lot to do as an adult, but she excels when regressing into a juvenile.

One thing--for anyone who really likes Marilyn Monroe (and who doesn't), this is a must see. Not because it's her best part, or because she has a lot of screen time, it isn't and she doesn't. But since she made this movie really before she became famous, it's instructive: the part is just another ditzy bombshell secretary, but something about her just jumps off the screen. This seems to me to be a great example of how there's an ineffable unexplainable quality of "screen presence". She manages to hold her own with Cary Grant, not an easy task for anyone, let alone some yet to be discovered starlet.

Now that we're in a gross out downward spiral for comedies, this might be the best tonic--a movie that's very silly, and very funny.

This movie contains a part that is one of the funniest I have ever seen. It is when Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers get called into the board of directors room and they both are acting like children, having both taken the formula without knowing it. To top it all off, the monkey was on the ceiling throwing light bulbs.

Overall it was a very funny movie, clever, yet far-fetched. I would rate this as one of Cary Grants best performances. Ginger Rogers was also very good. However for some reason there wasnt enough Marilyn in this movie. I few parts that she was in, she was very funny. I don't know why she only played a small role in this movie. Her funniest line was at the beginning when the boss told her to go to every ford dealership and look for Barnaby. Her reply was, "Which one do you want me to do first."

It was a funny movie with parts that will have you on the floor.

This is a very good movie to watch when all you want to do is to have a good time and some good laughs. There isn't a minute of it that would hold up to logical analysis, but there's barely a minute of it that isn't fun to watch. The story is pleasantly zany, the characters are entertaining, and the stars were all perfectly chosen for their roles.

Hawks's opening gag with Cary Grant in the doorway sets the tone, and lets you know right away that you can sit back and not take anything seriously for a while. Grant's character, a somewhat befuddled scientist who is trying to come up with a "youth formula", is the kind of role he could play in his sleep. As Grant's wife, Ginger Rogers doesn't get much to do for a good while, but then she has some fine comic moments later on. Charles Coburn is perfect as Grant's boss, and he gets a couple of the best lines in the whole show. And who better than Marilyn Monroe to play Coburn's secretary?

It's an entertaining throwback to the screwball comedies of a slightly earlier era. "Monkey Business" may be no masterpiece, but it's good fun of the pleasantly offbeat kind that is rare anymore.