Charley wishes to marry his girlfriend, Muriel, but he needs to get her mother's permission. He also has competition that is doing better: a rich rival played by Carlton Griffin. Muriel's mother tells Charley that he needs to have ancestors with "blue blood", but Charley does not know anything about his ancestors. Muriel tells Charley that she saw an advertisement in a magazine about a company in Texas that would tell you about your ancestors if you just send them a dollar. Charley proceeds to send the dollar to the company to see who his ancestors were.
Charley receives a letter from the company in Texas and they tell him that he is related to none other than Tarzan, the Ape Man. Charley, discouraged, tells the bad news to Muriel. Muriel is excited that Charley is related to Tarzan, telling him that Tarzan is one of the most romantic people she ever read about. Charley starts being very excited about this, too, and tells Muriel that he will try to emulate Tarzan. He even goes off to a jungle clad in Tarzan-like clothes. This means that Charley is wearing leopard skin!
In the jungle, Charley tries to swing from vine to vine imitating Tarzan, with various degrees of success. He accidently swings over a Nudist Colony, and all the people there start screaming. He tries to swing from a vine again and hits a tree.
The film then fades out to Charley and Muriel, married and both living in the jungle and wearing leopard skins. They even have a son in a wooden crib and a piano made of wood. They live in a sort of wooden tree house that Tarzan would live in. Charley is no longer Charley; he is Tarzan of the Apes. He can even talk to the animals, including a lion whose voice sounds awfully like James Finlayson's! Tarzan finds a little monkey named Junior in his house, a monkey who he hates. The monkey's father, a large gorilla and Tarzan's banker, comes to Tarzan's house to visit wearing a top hat and cane! He even has a British accent! While Tarzan is out milking a cow, the gorilla starts playing Tarzan's wooden piano. Tarzan returns and shows the gorilla his new radio that can pick up police calls. After Tarzan turns on the radio, they hear a police call that announces that "Mr. and Mrs. Johnson are coming!", sending the household into panic. The family and the apes leave the house and Tarzan warns the other animals in the jungle of the danger by doing his version of the Tarzan yell. Then, after Tarzan gets on an animal to ride off, he is thrown into a tree and the screen fades to when Charley got knocked out when he hit the tree in the beginning. It was all a dream! Muriel finds him and his rival is also there. He and Muriel ride off in her car while Charley does his Tarzan yell at his rival. When the film ends, it is clear that Muriel likes Charley much better than her other, top-hatted suitor!
Nature In The Wrong is a delightful film although stranger than usual for Charley Chase. It has some very inventive touches, like the wooden piano and the gorilla with the British accent. Charley's pratfall at the beginning of the film, before the Tarzan sequence, is one of his best and most natural, especially considering that he is not a comedian particularly known for his falls. There are some weaknesses in this film as well, such as the overlong "milking the cow" bit Charley does in the middle of the film. The ending, in particular, is rather abrupt. The jungle hears of the impending arrival of "Mr. and Mrs. Johnson" -- a reference to explorers Martin and Osa Johnson, who were famed at the time for their films and photographs of exotic locales -- and the jungle erupts in a frenzy. Cut to Charley, who regains consciousness, emerging from this bizarre dream (a strange but unavoidable cop-out).
All in all, Nature In The Wrong is one of the most inventive Charley Chase films of the sound era. There are some very funny mechanical gags in the film, mainly how Charley as Tarzan feeds his baby a cocoanut. Despite its thin plot, it is still one of his most entertaining and strangely subversive comedies of this period. It was released in 1933, a vintage year for Chase. His classic Fallen Arches was released only a few months earlier and Nature In The Wrong can certainly be considered to be another trophy atop his formidable comic mantlepiece.
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