Note: This is #7 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.
After watching Duck Soup, I think you can add The Marx Brothers to the list of Supposedly Classic Things I Don’t Get. It’s slapstick, absurd, manic, and strange, but I didn’t find it all that funny outside of one or two isolated gags. To me, it seems more akin to an early precursor to the “let’s give this popular stand-up comedian a TV show or movie” fad.
The plot, if you want to call it that, is that the small European country of Freedonia is on the verge of financial ruin, and the only person in a position to save it is a wealthy (and rather stuffy) Mrs. Teasdale. Oddly enough, she insists that Groucho Marx (or I guess you could say a character played by Groucho, but there’s really not much difference) be named as Freedonia’s supreme leader. Neighboring rival country Sylvania employs the mute and goofy Harpo Marx and his brother Chico Marx as spies to work against Freedonia, and the fourth Marx brother Zeppo is also in there somewhere as an adviser or something.
From that premise, the Marx brothers just kind of go their special brand of bat shit insane all over the place and chaos erupts. There’s something about stealing some plans, and war finally breaks out between the two countries. There are, strangely, no ducks and no soup actually involved.
The problem with this all is that the delivery is so absurd. Don’t get me wrong; I can appreciate the absurd and the nonsensical. I loved Dr. Strangelove, for example. But Groucho Marx comes on doing his Groucho Marx thing, delivering sarcastic and insulting lines left, right, and center despite whether they make sense or they’re funny. Harpo and Chico are slightly more amusing as a pair of bumbling spies, but even their bits seem injected into the middle of other bits just so that they can deliver some gags that they had come up with involving burning hats, hiked legs, and Harpo’s bathing his feet in lemonade. It felt, as I said, like a stand-up comedy act or Vaudeville show crammed into a movie skin.
So, didn’t particularly care for it, and I’m not particularly looking forward to the next Marx Brothers film, A Night at the Opera, coming up on my list. There is one funny bit in the middle where Chico and Harpo fool Groucho into thinking he’s looking into a mirror by standing on the other side and perfectly copying his every move, but really I got most of my entertainment from Duck Soup by trying to pick out the lines and gags I remember being repeated by subsequent Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Trailer below.
Also, Jeremy reviewed Guys and Dolls and some other stuff.
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