Monkey Business (Paramount). This picture begins when a first mate on an ocean liner tells the captain that there are four hidden stowaways on board. "How do you know there are four?" asks the captain. "They are singing 'Sweet Adeline,' " says the mate. Routed from the barrels in which they have secreted themselves, the Marx Brothers undertake to distress the other passengers. Harpo, on a kiddy-car, slides about the deck with evil looks for all. He captures and becomes the friend of a frog, which he keeps in his hat. He carries a cane which has a horn at one end, for no reason. Chased by the mate, he dives behind the curtain of a Punch & Judy show and pokes his shaggy head out in expressions of derision and despair. Groucho Marx makes friends with a gangster, throws a revolver into a pail of water. "It was necessary to drown the gat," he says, "but we saved a little gitten." Later he undertakes to discuss Love: "When love goes out the door money flies innuendo."
Chico impersonates a tough Italian, Zeppo makes friends with a pretty girl. Presently the boat docks and the Marx Brothers are faced with the problem of getting off without passports. This they try and fail to do by singing like Maurice Chevalier. Harpo, most furious at having his queer purposes interrupted, leaps on the desk of a passport inspector. Grinning wildly, he tears up thousands of important papers, stamps the pate of the chief passport inspector with a rubber stamp. The Marxes go to a party. They have contracted simultaneous alliances with two rival gangsters aboard ship. At the party, one gangster kidnaps his rival's daughter. She is the girl whom Zeppo admires and when she has been retrieved from a barn, in which Harpo makes advances to a calf, the picture ends.
Like other Marx Brothers pictures (The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers), Monkey Business makes as little sense as possible. For this and other reasons, admirers of the Marx Brothers will find it marvellously funny. Admirers of Harpo Marx who, when he smiles, looks like a maniacal Charlie Chaplin, will be particularly pleased. He is still the funniest as well as the most versatile Marx. Young Zeppo is more active than usual but he seems a dullard in comparison to his funnier brothers. Zeppo (Herbert) Marx has always been embarrassed by the necessity for playing pallid roles which cause spectators to say that there are only three and one-half Marx brothers. When the Marx Brothers were playing Animal Crackers on the stage, Producer Sam H. Harris said to him: "Can't you get a little more variety into your performance?" Replied Zeppo: "Just how many ways are there of saying yes?" The Gay Diplomat (RKO Radio) is a routine spy story which contains the one necessary new factor in the spy story formula. This factor consists in having two beautiful women both suspected of being spies. One of them, the heroine (Genevieve Tobin), proves to be innocent. The other (Betty Compson) is trapped by a handsome Rumanian officer (Ivan Lebedeff). The fact that Ivan Lebedeff speaks very poor English has been disguised by setting the action in Rumania which, with Bohemia, is usually selected as the mise en scene for cinemas in which the actors are linguistically deficient.