Manhattan Monkey Business: A chaotic trip through the dining room

Is it worth the watch?

If you have twenty minutes and a craving for some classic, frantic slapstick, sure. It’s light, silly, and moves fast enough that you won't get bored.

If you need a coherent plot or hate watching people trip over their own feet for laughs, maybe skip this one. It’s not exactly high art.

Manhattan Monkey Business is basically just a string of bad luck for Charley Chase. He sits down to eat, forgets his wallet, and suddenly he’s wearing an apron. It’s the kind of premise that exists just to watch someone get humiliated by a soup tureen.

The pacing is breathless. It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in Always Late, where the world is just trying to make the lead character miserable. There is this one scene where he’s trying to balance a tray, and I swear, I could hear the gears turning in his head as he realized it was all going to hit the floor.

The extras in the background look bored half the time, honestly. But then you catch a blink-and-you-miss-it reaction from someone in the corner, and it’s actually funny. It’s not trying to be The Ship of Lost Men. It’s just trying to get a chuckle.

Some of the physical comedy feels a bit repetitive. We get it, the tray is heavy. But then he does something weird with his eyebrows, and you’re back in it.

Random thoughts:

• The restaurant looks like it’s made of cardboard, but in a charming way.
• Charley’s attempts to look professional while he’s clearly panicking are the best part.
• The ending is abrupt. Like, really abrupt. It feels like the camera just stopped rolling because they ran out of film or lunch was ready.

It’s not going to change your life. It’s a breezy little disaster movie of sorts. Sometimes, that’s all I really want. 🐒