USA 68m Dir: Leo McCarey Key Cast: The Marx Brothers
I understand that to many what I'm about to say is sacrilege but here we go anyway: I didn't enjoy Duck Soup.
This Marx Brothers film sees Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) installed as the new president of Freedonia. He is spied upon by Chicolini (Chico) and Pinky (Harpo) from rival country Slyvania and Firefly's relationship with the Sylvanian dictator sours, leading to the two countries going to war with each other.
I quite enjoyed much of the comedy of the film. Groucho delivers one-liner after one-liner, most of which are decent jokes and some extremely funny. Chico and Harpo draw laughs from the slapstick side of things and it's a scene with them greatly annoying a lemonade vendor that was the highlight of the film for me. Harpo is a wonderful agent of chaos as he mischievously cuts anything in sight with his scissors when people turn their backs on him. However, much of it is dated with references to songs and pop culture that mean nothing to a modern audience.
The trouble I had was that comedy alone doesn't make a film. Sure, the comedy is great here but not a lot else is. The whole scenario and plot is completely irrelevant, not that there is a great deal of plot, and rarely has any connection with the comedy. When scenes are happening outside of the plot, namely the stuff with the lemonade vendor, it works. But trying to shove these sketch characters into a half-baked plot doesn't work.
I appreciate that it's all very silly but I still expect some basic logic. How could anyone have ever met Firefly and not hated him? It's all very well that he spouts all these lines and he'd be great at a dinner party but he's the worst person to run a country and at no point attempts to do so seriously. Much the same can be said of Harpo's characters, a literal clown, who is inexplicably a spy. What credentials does he hold to have that job? The characters themselves are find but they are used dreadfully. It doesn't help that people largely seem to ignore the Marx nonsense unless it's vital to the plot, making it feel like the three brothers are flitting between two dimensions, the real one and some clown dimension where they piss around all day long.
I say "three" brothers because I got most of the way through the film without actually knowing which character was played by Zeppo. He plays Firefly's secretary and was the straight man of the four brothers. There's nothing much wrong with his role but it's very small compared to the others. I can see the benefits of the straight man when you have a small cast but actually there are quite a few other actors here and all of them play it straight against the antics of the other three Marx brothers, meaning Zeppo is somewhat lost in the mix.
The comedy largely works but it's not a well-rounded film and doesn't have a plot to support the laughs.
Comments
Post a Comment