Room Service (1938)

Waste of time

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Only The Marx Bros. could make a static stage play with essentially almost all the "action", confined to a set of hotel rooms, so lively and entertaining. Similar to what the 3 Stooges or W.C. Fields could do! This is RKO so there are no lavish over-blown fancy and silly musical programs here, but what an amazingly terrific and funny series of events. Chico's moose head on the wall and Harpo's "flying turkey" circling the ceiling! A shy and timid playwright. The dumbest bill collector in the world. Lucile Ball has a very small part and Anne Miller is wonderful as the love interest. As always, and similar to W.C. Field's "Old Fashioned Way", the entire "company" (of 22 actors) is free-loading on the 19th floor, and Groucho is trying to raise money out of thin air for his play. (Watching The Marx Bros. "inhale" dinner is hilarious, especially Harpo eating peas with a knife.) Groucho owes the hotel 1200 bucks for room and board! That was an awful lot of money in those days. Two people "die" in the film, but both deaths are "faked": The playwright, who has 67 cents to his name, and Harpo, ridiculously dressed as a coal miner with a lit lamp!, in costume. He puts on his "Ookie face" with a fake dagger in his back, and appears in the excerpt and final scene of the play, which, thankfully, only runs for 3 minutes at the very end. Frank MacBride, as the overwrought "home office efficiency man" is terribly funny and terribly loud, both at the same time. Jumpin' Butterballs!

Still thinking like a stage play - which of course it is - this one suddenly adopts the one-set claustrophobia and shot-countershot formalities of a B picture. And, not incidentally, exhibits the pizazz and momentum of a dead goldfish. "It's like they're on barbiturates or something," Siue cried out in frustration when it became clear that things were not going to correct themselves. Maybe hating on this movie is like hating on Stardust Memories - maybe one should admire them for stretching themselves beyond their established shtick. But not only do they generally refrain from insulting anyone, they barely generate any chaos at all. Instead, they NEGOTIATE, they REASON, they REQUEST, they BROOD - and they waste untold moments advancing the plot instead of leaving that function to some annoying underling. Yes Margaret Dumont is missing, but that's not all; Lucille Ball and Ann Miller, who are actually in the movie, wind up just disappearing as well. There are even extended, silent pauses for entrances and exits. And while the Bros. sit around looking dazed and confused, the other male performers barf up a lung trying to fill the energy void. As bad as a Marx Brothers movie can realistically get.

The blessing of civilization is structure. "A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place"; now there's a neat old proverb for you! We don't know who originally coined that phrase, but they really knew the importance of brevity. And one thing about these classic old sampler proverbial sayings is; that like most things under the Sun, they always have exceptions.Let's consider the cinema and its relation to the saying. Even more particularly, we'll zero in on the most anti-order film 'commodity' that we know. That would be the Marxes.The Marx Brothers act was one of rapid fire lunacy. They need to have room to operate; that is, the material that they use must be constructed to give the appearance of Ad Lib. It also must be loose enough to allow for the occasional real Ad Lib to fit in, when it does manage to come down the pike. This is all clearly evident in their 5 Paramount Pictures features. The art was perfected with their arrival on the lot over at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Mr. Irving Thalberg's desire to make even better Marx Brothers vehicles.The Thalberg prescription called for a road trip by the now 3 Marx Brothers in a sojourn into some live stage appearances. The object was not to make for a Las Vegas type Act in some exclusive engagement; but rather to take some proposed material and try it out before a live theatre audience. The most obvious example of this method would be the State Room Scene in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (MGM, 1935).Up to the point of ROOM SERVICE (RKO Radio Pictures, 1938), all of the Marx Brothers' movies had been films written just for them. Their Movies' genesis either one of two categories. Either they were filmed versions of their highly successful Broadway Farces, THE COCONUTS, ANIMAL CRACKERS or MONKEY BUSINESS (which contained much of the material from their 1923 Broadway Show, "I'll Say She Is!" The rest were all original screenplays written for the screen' They had expressed interest in doing a film using a play that was already written; so that when they had the offer to go on loan to RKO to do ROOM SERVICE, they jumped at it. ROOM SERVICE being a story of a conniving Producer, Gordon Miller (to be played by Groucho) and his conning his way into getting his Play produced. They had the time and the extra spending money would come in handy; particularly for eldest brother Chico, who gambled for a hobby.So, with some tiny little changes (like changing the name of the Director from Binion to Binelli, so that Chico could apply his pseudo-Italian to the part.) And as for Harpo, well there was no part for him to do. He was just sort of an 'ad-on person'; though to his credit, he managed to be Harpo long enough and to be the main player in the finale's show stopping gag.The cast was filled up with enough top talent though. Whatever the parts called for, they delivered. We had. Veteran Director William A. Seiter, who had done quite a few types of films and had done Comedies with Laurel & Hardy (SONS OF THE DESSERT, Hal Roach/MGM, 1933) and Wheeler & Wolsey (GIRL CRAZY, RKO Radio, 1932). Others in the comedy line that he had worked with were: the Ritz Brothers and Abbot & Costello. He had done just about all, and would continue working into the days of Television 1n the '50's and up to 1960.A lot of the action is like so many of those Stage Plays, with a lot of people running around, like Turkeys with their heads cut off. ("Turkeys" instead of "Chickens" 'cause it's only 2 days to Thanksgiving as this is being written.). There would be a lot of door slamming, hollering, laughing and loss of temper.Others filling out the cast were lovely young ladies Ann Miller & Lucielle Ball (double Woo, woo, woo, woo!!), Frank Albertson, Chris Dunstan, Donald McBride, Phillip Loeb, Phillip Wood, Alexander Asro and Charles Halton.Well, the Brothers had done what they had wanted to try. And we may be thankful for it; for without it, we'd be forever wondering just what it would have been. Imagination being what it is, who knows just what our minds would have cooked-up?* Lively and amusing, yes; but is it a real, dyed in the wool Marx Brothers movie? Sorry Charlie, I no think so!NOTE: * The folks at RKO went and re-made ROOM SERVICE in 1944, but this time as a musical. STEP LIVELY RKO Radio, 1944) starred Frank Sinatra, George Murphy, Gloria DeHaven, Adolph Menjou, Walter Slezak, Anne Jeffreys and Grant Mitchell. Oddly it also featured on of the Movie Comedy Teams of the day. It was Wally Brown & Alan Carney; who were known as "RKO's answer to Abbot & Costello".

As was pointed out by another reviewer, the Marx Brothers were languishing at the MGM studio under Louis B. Mayer because they had been brought there by his rival, Irving Thalberg. There last film had been A Day At the Races and they were idle for over a year when RKO requested their services for Room Service. Which L.B. Mayer gave them I'm sure for a good price.Room Service is a fast moving slapstick farce which the Marx Brothers adapted easily to. There's even a Zeppo part which in this case is filled by Frank Albertson as the naive kid from Oswego who wrote the play that Groucho is trying by hook or crook to get produced. Emphasis on the latter.Room Service ran for 500 performances on Broadway in the 1937-1938 season and the great George Abbott directed it. Here he was the supervising producer and I'm sure credited director William Seiter served under some real strict supervision. Frank Albertson's role was played by Eddie Albert and the three Marx Brothers parts were played by Sam Levene, Phillip Loeb, and Teddy Hart. Loeb who had Chico's role in the Broadway show played the bill collector trying to get $42.00 on Albertson's typewriter. Well money stretched a lot farther in 1938.Repeating their Broadway roles were Alexander Asro as the waiter with ambitions to be an actor and Cliff Dunstan as Gribble the hotel manager who is Groucho's brother-in-law. And of course Donald MacBride who had the slowest burn in film next to Edgar Kennedy and could get exasperated faster than anyone else on screen is Dunstan's boss. MacBride usually gets as many laughs as stars do in their films and Room Service is no exception. JUMPING BUTTERBALLS.The key to the whole plot is the fact that a big backer of Groucho's show pulled out and stopped payment on a $15,000.00 check. But the bank is in California and it took five days for the stop payment to go through. That was interesting to me because in the film Catch Me If You Can, forger/confidence man Frank Abegnale played by Leonardo DiCaprio used that exact same gimmick in the sixties to get a whole lot of money by memorizing codes for routing on checks. Was Abegnale inspired by Room Service?Favorite scene, the Marx Brothers and Albertson chasing a turkey through their room that Harpo finagled. Favorite line belongs to Frank Albertson which is ironic with Groucho Marx in the same film. When they decide to fake the fact that Albertson is dying, Albertson says that, "I'll give the best performance you'll ever see in a hotel room."How did that one get by Mr. Breen?