StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

mike48128 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!

ironhorse_iv 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.

aberlour36 This is a fine comedy made in 1938, in the midst of that dazzling time in Hollywood when all of the studios were making what were to become classic films. This is one of the better ones, although not at the top. It's zany and unpredictable, and the Marx brothers are their usual selves. The unsung hero in the film is Donald MacBride, whose "slow-burn" humor graced many fine movies of the period. He's a hotel executive here, trying desperately to get Groucho and company to pay their hotel bill. The plot revolves around attempts to hoodwink him. Ann Miller and Lucille Ball have minor roles, which they both handle well. (Miller was only 19.) No, this is not up to the standard set by the Marx brothers in the early 1930s, but Room Service is well worth one's time.

bkoganbing As was pointed out by another reviewer, the Marx Brothers were languishing at the MGM studio under Louis B. Mayer because they had been brought there by his rival, Irving Thalberg. There last film had been A Day At the Races and they were idle for over a year when RKO requested their services for Room Service. Which L.B. Mayer gave them I'm sure for a good price.Room Service is a fast moving slapstick farce which the Marx Brothers adapted easily to. There's even a Zeppo part which in this case is filled by Frank Albertson as the naive kid from Oswego who wrote the play that Groucho is trying by hook or crook to get produced. Emphasis on the latter.Room Service ran for 500 performances on Broadway in the 1937-1938 season and the great George Abbott directed it. Here he was the supervising producer and I'm sure credited director William Seiter served under some real strict supervision. Frank Albertson's role was played by Eddie Albert and the three Marx Brothers parts were played by Sam Levene, Phillip Loeb, and Teddy Hart. Loeb who had Chico's role in the Broadway show played the bill collector trying to get $42.00 on Albertson's typewriter. Well money stretched a lot farther in 1938.Repeating their Broadway roles were Alexander Asro as the waiter with ambitions to be an actor and Cliff Dunstan as Gribble the hotel manager who is Groucho's brother-in-law. And of course Donald MacBride who had the slowest burn in film next to Edgar Kennedy and could get exasperated faster than anyone else on screen is Dunstan's boss. MacBride usually gets as many laughs as stars do in their films and Room Service is no exception. JUMPING BUTTERBALLS.The key to the whole plot is the fact that a big backer of Groucho's show pulled out and stopped payment on a $15,000.00 check. But the bank is in California and it took five days for the stop payment to go through. That was interesting to me because in the film Catch Me If You Can, forger/confidence man Frank Abegnale played by Leonardo DiCaprio used that exact same gimmick in the sixties to get a whole lot of money by memorizing codes for routing on checks. Was Abegnale inspired by Room Service?Favorite scene, the Marx Brothers and Albertson chasing a turkey through their room that Harpo finagled. Favorite line belongs to Frank Albertson which is ironic with Groucho Marx in the same film. When they decide to fake the fact that Albertson is dying, Albertson says that, "I'll give the best performance you'll ever see in a hotel room."How did that one get by Mr. Breen?