When it comes to comedy teams, some people insist that The Marx Brothers are the absolute greatest, while others seem to find them about as amusing as a sink full of dirty dishes.
Myself, I'm sort of positioned in the very middle when it comes to being able to appreciate this particular, early-Hollywood foursome and their chaotic style of humor.
For me, I find that The Marx Brothers' slapstick antics, their one-liners, their silly insults and innuendo only work to their advantage about half of the time. For the rest of the time The Marx Brothers' material is a real hit'n'miss thing where the situations often teeter pretty close to the point of falling flat on their face more often than one would expect.
Personally, I don't believe that the scriptwriters fully understood how best to present The Marx Brothers in a favorable light to the movie-going public. And because of that they ended up with story-lines that, often enough, had a real lazy, off-kilter and slap-dash feel to them. (Well, at least that's the way The Marx Brothers' films appear to me)
Perhaps if The Marx Brothers' films had been edited down from their usual 80-90 minute running times to, say, about 30 minutes of comedy-run-amok, then I think that they would have been a helluva lot more entertaining in the long run.
Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not slamming The Marx Brothers. I can certainly appreciate what they had to offer, only, I think that it could've been done better in much-much smaller doses.
I guess with The Marx Brothers being such a novelty (as they certainly were back in the 1930s), makes it quite understandable to me as to why they were so popular in their genre.
Monkey Business' story concerns The Marx Brothers as stowaways on a luxury ocean-liner crossing the Atlantic from Europe to NYC.
Once they are discovered by the ship's crew, the chase is on as the boys do whatever's necessary to avoid being caught, arrested, and, thus, thrown into the brig for the duration of the trip.
As luck would have it, The Marx Brothers inadvertently get mixed up in a feud that's going on between two rival, big-shot gangsters who are also on board the same ship.
Once stateside the daughter of gangster-Helton is kidnapped by the henchmen of gangster-Briggs. It is now up to The Marx Brothers to step into the middle of this (monkey) business and, hopefully, save the day.
Myself, I'm sort of positioned in the very middle when it comes to being able to appreciate this particular, early-Hollywood foursome and their chaotic style of humor.
For me, I find that The Marx Brothers' slapstick antics, their one-liners, their silly insults and innuendo only work to their advantage about half of the time. For the rest of the time The Marx Brothers' material is a real hit'n'miss thing where the situations often teeter pretty close to the point of falling flat on their face more often than one would expect.
Personally, I don't believe that the scriptwriters fully understood how best to present The Marx Brothers in a favorable light to the movie-going public. And because of that they ended up with story-lines that, often enough, had a real lazy, off-kilter and slap-dash feel to them. (Well, at least that's the way The Marx Brothers' films appear to me)
Perhaps if The Marx Brothers' films had been edited down from their usual 80-90 minute running times to, say, about 30 minutes of comedy-run-amok, then I think that they would have been a helluva lot more entertaining in the long run.
Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not slamming The Marx Brothers. I can certainly appreciate what they had to offer, only, I think that it could've been done better in much-much smaller doses.
I guess with The Marx Brothers being such a novelty (as they certainly were back in the 1930s), makes it quite understandable to me as to why they were so popular in their genre.
Monkey Business' story concerns The Marx Brothers as stowaways on a luxury ocean-liner crossing the Atlantic from Europe to NYC.
Once they are discovered by the ship's crew, the chase is on as the boys do whatever's necessary to avoid being caught, arrested, and, thus, thrown into the brig for the duration of the trip.
As luck would have it, The Marx Brothers inadvertently get mixed up in a feud that's going on between two rival, big-shot gangsters who are also on board the same ship.
Once stateside the daughter of gangster-Helton is kidnapped by the henchmen of gangster-Briggs. It is now up to The Marx Brothers to step into the middle of this (monkey) business and, hopefully, save the day.