Nice effects though.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Only The Marx Bros. could make a static stage play with essentially almost all the "action", confined to a set of hotel rooms, so lively and entertaining. Similar to what the 3 Stooges or W.C. Fields could do! This is RKO so there are no lavish over-blown fancy and silly musical programs here, but what an amazingly terrific and funny series of events. Chico's moose head on the wall and Harpo's "flying turkey" circling the ceiling! A shy and timid playwright. The dumbest bill collector in the world. Lucile Ball has a very small part and Anne Miller is wonderful as the love interest. As always, and similar to W.C. Field's "Old Fashioned Way", the entire "company" (of 22 actors) is free-loading on the 19th floor, and Groucho is trying to raise money out of thin air for his play. (Watching The Marx Bros. "inhale" dinner is hilarious, especially Harpo eating peas with a knife.) Groucho owes the hotel 1200 bucks for room and board! That was an awful lot of money in those days. Two people "die" in the film, but both deaths are "faked": The playwright, who has 67 cents to his name, and Harpo, ridiculously dressed as a coal miner with a lit lamp!, in costume. He puts on his "Ookie face" with a fake dagger in his back, and appears in the excerpt and final scene of the play, which, thankfully, only runs for 3 minutes at the very end. Frank MacBride, as the overwrought "home office efficiency man" is terribly funny and terribly loud, both at the same time. Jumpin' Butterballs!

Theatrical producer Gordon Miller (Groucho Marx) is $1200 behind on the rent. His brother in-law hotel manager has been covering for him but the landlord is coming and sure to find out. Gordon, Harry Binelli (Chico Marx) and Faker Englund (Harpo) are about to leave when actress Christine Marlowe (Lucille Ball) tells them that a financial backer named Jenkins is coming in. The guys have to stay at the hotel to wait for Jenkins. The play's writer Leo Davis (Frank Albertson) comes looking for an advance and the guys convince him to stay in their room. Davis falls for the guys' assistant Hilda Manney (Ann Miller). The hotel troubleshooter Gregory Wagner discovers the debt and tries to kick the guys out. Jenkins tells the guys that his employer is willing to put up $15k if a role is given to a certain young lady. Gordon comes up with the idea for Davis to fake the measles to keep Wagner from kicking them out.This is not specifically written for the Marx brothers and it shows. It lacks a certain power to their rapid fire jokes. Some of the jokes are still funny. Staying in that one room for that long does get monotonous. This has a twenty something Lucille Ball in a minor role. She isn't given anything big to do. The guys don't do much music in this one. It's not a big lost for me. I always like Harpo and he brings the best jokes of the lot. There is one long running joke with "Hail!" that I don't really get.

Room Service might not be the most famous film comedy starring the Marx Brothers, but it's worth a watch. Based on the 1937 play of the same name by Allen Boretz & John Murray. Less frenetic and more physically contained than their other movies, the plot revolves around getting a stage play, Hail and Farewell, to be produced and funded by mysterious backer Zachary Fisk, while evading paying the hotel bill. The Marx Brothers are trying to fund this play. They have assembled the cast and crew of the play in the hotel ballroom, Gordon Miller (Grocho Marx) try to skip out of the hotel without paying before Gregory Wagner (Donald MacBride), the owner of the hotel finds out. MacBride is just as funny as the Marx Brothers as Wagner the efficiency expert, is really the stiff that the Marx Brothers are trying to tear down with their anti-authority hijinks. MacBride tends to shock out his catch phrase throughout the movie, that can be annoying. MacBride and the Marx Brothers work well with each other, as the scenes between them are just funny. Miller doesn't skip yet, after receives word that one of his actresses, Christine Marlowe (Lucille Ball) has arranged for a backer. Lucille Ball doesn't give much to the movie, as she plays second-banana, her comedic side really doesn't show in the film. She fades into the background. I felt that she could have been use more. It seems at the time, she was mostly use for eye-candy. Now Miller and the other Marx Brothers must keep his room, and hide his crew until the meeting with the backer can happen. Problems continue to happen, when the author comes to stay with them. Author, Leo Davis (Frank Albertson) is a Mickey Rooney's Andy Hardy type character, that can be annoying at times, but Miller finds a way to use Davis to keep their room at less for the moment. The movie is an uneven but entertaining blend of traditional stage farce and Marxian madness. There are the same types of humor that you see in other Marx brothers films are in this film just in a limited area, because of that, the room becomes somewhat a character developing area. It's nice to see a movie with little cut scenes and one location. It gives the movie a small time feel, and how importation the place is. William A. Seiter's direction keeps the brothers limited to the area, gives the audience the best performance you ever saw in a hotel bedroom. Nearly the entire movie is filmed within two adjoining hotel rooms. There's no musical number except a few bars of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. That means no Harpo playing the Harp or Chico playing the piano. Still it wasn't needed. There are a number of funny supporting cast that continues to be gags throughout the film. The man from the collection agency, the man representing the financial backer for the play, the Russian want-to-be actor, and the doctor each pop up in one or two scenes to move the plot and supply the set up for a couple gags. Several high quality visual and verbal gags are included. This Marx Brothers film might not live up to Night of the Opera, or Duck Soap, but still it's worth noticing. Watch it.

30 years ago today, Groucho Marx died at 86, three days after Elvis Presley. For the occasion, I'd thought I'd view some of his movies of which Room Service is one of them. Unlike the others he made with his brothers, this one wasn't especially tailored to their talents since it was originally a Broadway play starring other people. So the action is mostly confined to the hotel and the pace slows down a little bit. Nevertheless, there's still some witty lines and visual humor concerning Harpo that makes this one of the more enjoyable latter day-Marx Brothers films. And there's a wonderful supporting cast with Frank Albertson as the playwright and, especially, Donald MacBride as the hotel manager who keeps exclaiming, "Jumping Butterballs!" Also of note is the fact that a couple of young players named Ann Miller and Lucille Ball appear here long before their established personas. So while not the classic of their five Paramount and first two MGM pictures, this RKO production was nothing the Marx Brothers should be ashamed of.