Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997)
Monkey Business
Tagged: Film.
(ot Darling, I am Growing Younger) US movie (1952). 20th Century-Fox. Pr Sol C Siegel. Dir Howard Hawks. Spfx Ray Kellogg. Screenplay I A L Diamond, Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, Harry Segall. Starring Cary Grant (Dr Barnaby Fulton), Marilyn Monroe (Miss Laurel), Ginger Rogers (Edwina Fulton). 97 mins. B/w.
A team under myopic, middle-aged Barnaby Fulton is developing a rejuvenation drug. An experimental chimp serendipitously mixes the correct formula, and pours it into the water tank. Fulton, drinking from the tank, undergoes a form of Identity Exchange, becoming, in effect, an adolescent in an adult's body. After the effects have worn off, his wife Edwina makes the same mistake, with similar results. In this Technofantasy sex comedy, Fulton manages not to be seduced by either the adolescent Edwina or the bimboish secretary Miss Laurel; although filled with innuendo, Monkey Business dodges the full implications of its central fantasy. Rogers, 41 when the movie was made, proves expert at shedding 20 years; Grant, aged 48, is less successful. [JG]
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