Room Service (DVD)

Check out who's checked in! The Marx Brothers deliver roomfuls of laughter in the movie of the Broadway hit Room Service (adapted by Morrie Ryskind, a veteran of The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers and A Night at the Opera). Groucho plays penniless producer Gordon Miller, playing the angles as he tries to keep his cast housed in the Great White Way Hotel while casting about for a backer for his play Hail and Farewell. Alas, the efforts of Gordon and his cohorts (Chico, Harpo and Lucille Ball) aren't faring well, and all hail is about to break loose, what with the steady stream of hotel uppity-ups and house cops and the We Never Sleep Collection Agency man at the door. But wait! No one, Gordon thinks, would toss a sick man on the street because he can't pay his hotel bill. That leads to a diagnosis of madcap comedy involving feigned illness, two faked suicides, a kidnapped doctor, a bogus doctor and lots more Marxist doctorin'. It's all good medicine.

• comedy