Production notes

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 74% based on 27 reviews, with an average score of 6.8/10. Hawks said he did not think the film's premise was believable, and as a result thought the film was not as funny as it could have been. Peter Bogdanovich noted in 2011 that the scenes with Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe work especially well and lamented that Ginger Rogers plays the female lead role instead of Monroe. However, Gregory Lamb of The Christian Science Monitor described Rogers as "a comedienne par excellence" in the film. Jay Carmody of the Washington Evening Star offered a lukewarm contemporary review, stating, "Dreary business is what it really is. Farce writing can be a treacherous trade...and not even the insurance represented by Miss Rogers, Grant, and Marilyn Monroe can provide adequate protection in cases like Monkey Business...Miss Rogers and Grant, a pair of gifted farceurs, earn a kind of grudging admiration for giving such a courageous try at such unrewarding material as 'Monkey Business' provides them...In the presence of such silky performers as the picture's veterans, [Monroe's] acting has apparently climbed no higher than one degree above zero but no one will care." Leslie Halliwell stated in 1989: "Remarkably laboured comedy by and with top people; it can't fail to have funny moments, but they are few and far between." Pauline Kael wasn't impressed in her 1991 compendium of movies she had seen: "Grating screwball farce ... boisterous, labored whimsey ... "