Pun Salad

As you'll notice, the DVD publishers consider Amazon Prime considers Marilyn Monroe the selling point here, putting her, um, profile on the box. (I guess that's two selling points. Ha!) But there are three bigger reasons that will snag classic movie lovers: it has (1) Cary Grant and (2) Ginger Rogers. And it's directed by (3) Howard Hawks. Marilyn is pretty good here, but hers is a minor role.

Cary and Ginger play Barnaby and Edwina Fulton, a staid and respectable middle-aged couple. Barnaby, a scientist, is preoccupied to the point of absent-mindedness over his current research: a drug he hopes will reverse the vicissitudes of aging. Oxley, his boss, is eager to market it as a fountain-of-youth potion. Marilyn plays Miss Laurel, Oxley's scatterbrained secretary, not hired for her typing skills. (When Barnaby remarks that she's come to work early, she replies: "Mr. Oxley's been complaining about my punctuation, so I'm careful to get here before nine.")

They're testing on chimps; in a very amusing scene, one of the monkeys gets loose and, undetected, mixes together a random collection of ingredients and dumps it in the water cooler; this actually happens to work. Soon Barnaby is acting much younger than his age, carrying on with Miss Laurel. It's a hoot. In fact, it gets to be a trifle too silly for me, which means that it will peg the meter for many.

I hear you asking: does Ginger Rogers have a dancing scene? Yes, she does, dragging Cary Grant around the floor. He's no Astaire.

Also: this may be the single best acting performance by a chimpanzee I've ever seen.