Chérie, je me sens rajeunir

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.

With Cary Grant, Ginger Rodgers, Charles Coburn and a young Marilyn Monroe this hilarious testament to the great screwball comedies is worth it's weight in gold. Far funnier and more delectable than the paltry Hollywood comedies (i.e. Adam Sandler) that grace theaters these days, this gem filmed in black and white is a model of a great genre.

Directed with mercurial class by Howard Hawkes and featuring the great Ben Hecht among the screenwriters, this 1952 comedy has a zany but totally logical premise. All the players simply shine in the material; especially Grant and Rodgers who do hilarious takeoffs on becoming and behaving like children.

I find comments made here concerning the political incorrectness of the cowboy and Indian scene to be laughable. Why do modern movie goers judge a movie 50 years old by current standards. I was born in 1950 and every kid on the block all over the USA played cowboys and Indians. It wasn't politically incorrect in 1952; it was in fact, part of the mainstream socio-cultural structure. Shall we not play "The Merchant of Venice" because Shakespeare's Shylock is anti-semetic. I'm reminded of how ludicrous "Pearl Harbor" was with none of the sailors smoking because it's "politically incorrect" these days. One must put the time and context of certain works of art in perspective. Frankly, the cowboy and Indian sequence is one of the funniest in the movie and very true to the 1950's. Anyway, enough of that diatribe. Run out and see this movie. It'll make you laugh! Guaranteed!

_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.

Monkey Business Cary Grant's second film with Ginger Rogers and his fourth and final film for director Howard Hawks has him reaching back into some of the lunacy of his previous work like Arsenic and Old Lace. Not since that madcap piece was Grant ever so frantic on the screen.

Ginger Rogers doesn't yield one inch of screen ground to him in that department though. In The Major and The Minor she faked being a teenage girl very convincingly and in this film she and Cary go back even farther in their return to adolescence.

Cary is a research scientist who is working on that eternal quest for the fountain of youth. A chimpanzee gets loose from her cage and mixes some chemicals and dumps the result in the water-cooler. Everyone thinks it's what Cary's concocted and the company bigwigs led by Charles Coburn and Larry Keating try to get it from him, but in his adolescent state it's no avail.

Monkey Business does meander over into just plain outright silliness, but with Cary and Ginger you don't really mind. I do so love the way Cary with a gang of kids he's playing Indians with leave poor Hugh Marlowe tied to a tree ready for a scalping because the wolfish Marlowe's been making moves on Ginger.

Second to that is Charles Coburn and Ginger Rogers trying to talk to an infant who they think Cary has morphed into. Coburn may have been one of the screen's greatest actors, he'd have to have been to hold his own with that baby. Note the dignified expression on his face never leaves.

Of course Monkey Business is also known for having one of Marilyn Monroe's early screen roles in it on her way up. She's Coburn's secretary and note the expression on Coburn's face as she is showing Grant the result of his work on a no run stocking.

Monkey Business is second tier stuff for Grant, Rogers, and Hawks, but fans of all three will like it and quite a few more than those people.

Thoroughly enjoyable comedy with Cary Grant as the absent-minded professor who's messing around looking for the fountain of youth. Ginger Rogers gets to dance a little without Fred Astaire plus demonstrate a wonderful comic style as she mixes it up with Marilyn Monroe. It's 1952 but you wouldn't know it (except for Marilyn's presence). Howard Hawks takes you back to the good old days when Hollywood demonstrated total mastery of time and space with the screwball comedy.

Along with monkeyshines and child actors, you really get a lot in this film: Grant and Rogers play off each other very nicely and the driving scene with Monroe and Grant is a classic. Adding to the hijinx is Charles Coburn, who always dominates the screen with his easy charm. I bet he loved chasing after Monroe with a spray bottle.

The movie holds up well over 50 years later which makes one wonder why Hollywood hasn't, cringe, chosen to ape the storyline for Jim Carrey or maybe Tom Hanks, who might be looking for a comic turn these days.

But then they remade Freaky Friday this summer, didn't they?