Room Service (1938)
Directed by William A. Seiter

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.

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...