Monkey Business

Monkey Business (1931) is the Marx Brothers' third feature film, a Paramount comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Norman Z. McLeod, it opens with Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo hiding in herring barrels in the cargo hold of a transatlantic ocean liner — which is already more dignified than what follows.

Both ends of a gangster feud happen to be sailing on the same ship, and the brothers end up enlisted by each side simultaneously. Harpo loses a critical document. All four of them attempt to impersonate Maurice Chevalier. The ship's officers are persistently, hopelessly outmaneuvered. Once the liner docks, one gangster kidnaps the other's daughter and the brothers are somehow the ones who have to sort it out.

The pace is Paramount at its tightest — no patience for anyone who blinks. Harpo is in particularly destructive form here, deploying a full kit of physical chaos without a single line of dialogue. For anyone coming to the Marx Brothers for the first time, this is the right place to start — fast, anarchic, and still funny ninety years on. Stream Monkey Business (1931) online on iFILM.