Room Service

Room Service
September 30, 1938
RKO
Comedy
VHS
C

It's not a good sign that William Seiter also directed Roberta, although of course the main problem here is that Morrie Ryskind had to tailor a successful non-Marx play to the Marxes.  Unlike the whimsically titled Paramount movies, this is even more literally titled than the MGM movies, with at least two title-drops in the mostly hotel-set story.  You can make an entertaining movie set in a hotel, but there have got to be more interesting events than here.  (Same Time Next Year succeeds partly by not just saying the word "sex," as Groucho does here, and by covering a much longer span of time.)  Yes, there's a flying turkey and fake suicides and one of the fastest courtships ever (five days, although admittedly Ann Miller is pretty cute).  And, yes, it's nice to see Lucy, no longer blonde, with a more substantial role.  But she and the Marxes seem restrained most of the time.  (Chico hardly seems Italian, or awake.)

I kept thinking the movie might make it to sort of funny, as with the topical references to Gypsy Rose Lee and FDR.  As it is, the frequent exclamation of "JUMPING BUTTERBALLS!!" is unintentionally more amusing than any of the intended gags.  This may well be the Marx movie I own that I've seen the least, and when I got a phone call about half an hour before the ending, I forgot that I hadn't finished watching, until I went through the living room again.  Furthermore, while the music in their MGM movies hasn't been anything amazing so far, it beats two renditions of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."  This film's only for the Marx completist.

Donald MacBride (the "butterballs" shouter) and Bruce Mitchell would go on to The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, Phoebe Campbell and Cliff Herd to Citizen Kane.  Charles Halton, who's "Dr. Glass" here, would appear twenty years later, in his 80s, as the school principal of High School Confidential!, with a pivotal role as the bank examiner of It's a Wonderful Life along the way.

Funnier than the actual movie.