Film Review
Having notched up two massive box office hits with MGM -
A Night at the Opera (1935) and
A Day at the Races (1937) - the
Marx Brothers were loaned out to RKO for what is generally considered
one of their lesser films,
Room
Service. Adapted from a popular stage play,
Room Service has the distinction of
being the one Marx Brothers film in which the brothers play characters
which were not created with them in mind, and this is probably why the
film was not a great success (it performed so badly at the box office
that it lost money).
Confined pretty well to just one set (a
hotel room) and lacking the brothers' trademark musical digressions,
the film has little of the vitality and anarchic fun we would expect to
find in a classic Marx Brothers film, and it soon becomes repetitive
and tedious. Even Groucho's wisecracking becomes monotonous after
a while, and Lucille Ball and Ann Miller have a thankless task trying
to field the still-born gags. The film was directed by
William A. Seiter (best known for the Rita Hayworth vehicle
You Were Never Lovelier (1942))
and whilst he was a versatile and capable filmmaker he clearly has
no idea how to direct a Marx Brothers film. It's Seiter
we have to blame for the fact that most of the best scripted gags get
cruelly strangled at birth.
Despite the poor quality of the material they are given, the Marxes still
manage to make something of it, and there is the odd moment of
laugh-out-loud brilliance, such as the banquet scene and
the sequence in which the boys chase an
unconvincing flying turkey around the room.
Room Service is entertaining
enough, but it falls way short of the excellence of the Marxes' earlier
work. Even by this stage, it looks as if the Marx Brothers
magic is starting to wear a little thin.
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Gordon Miller is a theatrical producer who has ratcheted up an enormous
bill at the hotel where he is staying with his cast and crew.
Unable to pay his debts, he plans to slip away quietly with his
accomplices Harry Binelli and Faker Englund. But before he goes,
one of his actresses, Christine, tells Miller that she has found him a
wealthy backer for his latest play. Unfortunately, by this time
Miller has exhausted the patience of the hotel manager and his boss, who insist that
he either pays up or leaves. Miller and his staff find themselves
under siege, waiting for their mysterious backer to show up with a big
cheque. To complicate matters further, the play's author, Leo
Davis, appears without a dollar to his name. To avoid being
evicted by the hotel management, Davis must feign illness and then
death, as Miller and his friends resort to ever desperate measures to
ward off starvation...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.