Grant's formulas are flops, but one day test chimpanzee Esther escapes from her cage and mixes up a concoction that she dumps into the water cooler. Cary Grant, and eventually his wife Rogers, drink from the water cooler and briefly return to their madcap youth with zany results. The action culminates with Grant's would-be homewrecker Hugh Marlowe getting tied up and scalped by a slew of children playing Indians.
How others will see it. Much of Hollywood's best talent went into this film, including director Hawks and lead writer Ben Hecht. Supposedly, Hawks wanted a different actress for Ginger Rogers' role, but in this case the studio proved correct. She received the only Golden Globes nomination. The Oscars ignored the movie, continuing their emphasis of drama over comedy.
Today at imdb.com, the user vote count exceeds 8K, fairly high for a 1952 black and white movie, probably due to the presence of Grant and Monroe. The latter had advanced to supporting role status but was a few years short of first-billed moviestardom.
The imdb.com user ratings are consistent across all demographics, but surprisingly middling at 7.0. Again, this appears to be the cultural bias against screwball comedies, a lost art that Howard Hawks, the Marx Brothers, and W.C. Fields briefly nearly perfected.
How I felt about it. Anyone who has seen enough overrated to bad screwball comedies (anyone remember the Porky's franchise?) know how difficult it is to pull them off. The demise of the Production Code in the mid-1960s allowed for more risqué material, but this did not help matters. The best comedies in recent decades, such as the Toy Story animated features, have screwball moments but don't really fit into the genre.
Monkey Business proves that it the key elements are the director and cast. Child actor George Winslow gets Cary Grant to do a war dance, and talks Hugh Marlowe into playing maypole. His lines wouldn't work if not delivered with his deadpan effectiveness.
Hawks' best known screwball comedy is Bringing Up Baby, and Cary Grant plays a similar role in both films, a clueless fuddy duddy. Here, though he has a Mr. Hyde transformation that allows him to turn the tables on his antagonists, notably Hugh Marlowe. Ginger Rogers also gets to show her versatility and pluck. It is perhaps her final memorable role, since she was relegated to 'B' movies and television work soon thereafter.
The most underrated actress in the film, though, is Esther the Chimpanzee. She has at least three scenes where she is required to do various unlikely to crazy actions (e.g. swinging from a chandelier, mixing chemicals, tampering with the water cooler) and pulls them off without a hitch. Undoubtedly, the film editor and animal trainer also helped Esther perform well.