The beginning of the end or merely the end of the beginning?
A Day at the Races is not a bad Marx Brothers movie, but it is surely the most over-rated.
It's also the longest, for reasons not to be found on screen. And it's also my wife's favourite, for reasons that are to be found on the screen, but which don't make a hell of a lot of sense to me. Suffice to say that when Thalberg patronisingly suggested that the emasculation of the Marxes would make them more popular with women, he could have had my beloved in mind.
Now back to the boys' stuff.
It's the film where the Thalberg deviations from the Paramount formula, which A Night at the Opera was inspired enough and hilarious enough to withstand, or circumnavigate, or even turn into advantages, finally come home to roost. All those corny ideas about it being funnier with fewer jokes and a better plot, and that comedy needs to be built around a plot and characters the audience care about, and that audiences need something to root for, and eruptions of anarchy only work if given explicable narrative justification... all that rubbish that Kaufman saw coming and sent packing in A Night at the Opera is lying in wait for A Day at the Races, and this time Thalberg wins.
And we see, or should see, that the fact that Opera was so good doesn't mean that Thalberg was right.
And this despite the fact that the film is the most painfully transparent imitation of Opera imaginable, with everything that was felt to have been successful in the first film repeated, only in almost every case just that little bit less effective, because misunderstood.
The characterisation is the first and most obvious casualty.
Opera had the boys helping out the hero and heroine, but it wasn't like they were helping them save up for an eye operation: it was all about opera singers being nasty to other opera singers, and the villains, so to speak, were just pompous arty types. These were exactly the kind of people the Marx Brothers had always enjoyed annoying, and for no more benevolent a reason than that they deserve it. And so the fact that the Brothers had been turned into helping hands didn't show up as strongly, or destructively, as it might have done in another context... a context like this, for instance.
Here the villains really are villains, and the task in hand is to help Maureen O'Sullivan, as pretty Judy Standish, save her struggling business from nasty Douglas Dumbrille.
Groucho is his usual conman, except this time he doesn't want to be found out, and he keeps trying to flee when things get difficult. When he does let the inner Groucho free, with predictably chaotic results, we fade to the next day and find him writhing with remorse at having let Maureen down.
He's pretending to be a doctor, but not in the way that he has pretended to be a head of state or a college professor or an explorer - that is to say, magically - he's a real veterinarian, and a down at heel veterinarian at that, posing as a doctor so as to deceive Margaret Dumont into thinking she is ill when she is not. (Why? We need a reason if we're going to take these people seriously, Mr Thalberg. To extort money from her? Some hero!)
There's no point in playing it semi-straight because it still makes no sense: the man that Judy thinks might be the one to turn around the fortunes of her ailing sanitarium may not be the Groucho of Duck Soup, but neither is he anyone's idea of a real doctor, and if she looks carefully she might notice that his moustache and eyebrows are painted on. Otis B. Driftwood was an opportunist and a conman, but he had no 'real' life; we knew nothing whatever about him, and most important of all he was having a good time. Hugo Z. Hackenbush is an unsuccessful vet, who can't afford his rent, and however hard he finds it to restrain his anarchic impulses, he plainly wants to. It's as if what we had always taken to be Groucho's conscious assault on propriety was in fact a kind of nervous compulsion, a sort of Tourette's syndrome.
I don't want to get too misty-eyed about this, but I reckon that the magic of the pure Marx Brothers, the characters those men perfected on stage, and that writers like Kaufman and directors like McLeod understood so well, lay in the fact that they were forces for good inadvertently, because they were first and solely forces of honesty.
They act with both complete freedom and complete incorruptibility, and their very irreverence casts them as guardians of integrity. When they attack pomposity, dishonesty and selfishness, the rightness of their attitudes has the incidental side effect of making life's journey just that little bit easier for the honest, good-natured, unpretentious and invariably hard done by people who would otherwise be entirely at the mercy of the Lasparris and the Trentinos.
All the Paramount films end with a wrong righted, but the Brothers themselves, though instrumental in bringing that end about, only serve the interests of rightness in the abstract; it's never explicitly their mission that Huxley win the game or that John Parker is recognised as a great artist. That sort of thing just happens, when you have Groucho, Chico, Harpo and sometimes Zeppo about the place.
This is a vital point: these films are saying that the world would be a better place with a few more Marx Brothers loose in it. And that simply isn't true of these Marx Brothers, of Hugo and Tony and Stuffy. They're just like the people they're trying to help: life's losers, not well off, not distinguished, always looking over their shoulders, up against it... they're just a bit zanier than the straight heroes, that's all.
At Paramount, an interesting hierarchical relationship was developed between the brothers. Groucho was the outsider on the inside, the man who could talk himself into positions of influence and responsibility he was clearly and openly unworthy of filling. But Chico and Harpo are complete outsiders, overtly if guilelessly criminal and true forces of nature, and without Groucho they would have no connection whatsoever with the worlds in which the films are set. Groucho is their gateway in to Rittenhouse society. Groucho is an intermediary, an interloper in the world from which they are excluded: he recognises their purity of spirit, their complete surrender to the impulses he must to some degree sublimate in the grander scheme of rising to genuine influence and attainment, the better to make fools of the really important people. So he co-opts his more instinctive siblings as natural allies.
All of this goes to the wall at MGM. People who say that Room Service constrains them with too much reality really ought to take another look at this one. Groucho is sentimentalised: his anarchy is directed, purposeful, all in a good cause, and we start to find out things we don't want to know about him: he becomes a real man.
Harpo survives the transition best, perhaps, but there are vulgar efforts to make him pathetic - the one thing the Paramount Harpo could least be described as - and A Day at the Races is the second film in a row that introduces us to him by showing him being beaten by a hiss and boo bully.
But it is Chico who is most ruinously reinvented. Chico, whose logic was once so obtuse, whose motivation so mysterious, whose instinct for disruption so unyielding, that he was even capable of reducing Groucho to frustration is now working contentedly, and presumably efficiently, for the Standish Sanitarium, and so devoted to Judy that he's willing to work without pay. Once he was unwilling to work, even, perhaps especially, for pay.
And he's resourceful. Getting Mrs Upjohn to bankroll the sanitarium? His idea. Sending for Dr Hackenbush to sweeten her up? His idea. Ravelli the musician, who charges more the less he plays, and most of all for not rehearsing, this plainly is not.
And he's not even given anything funny to do. The character is completely superfluous, pointless - it's a Zeppo role.
Nonsense, you yell!
Of course he's given something funny to do, I hear you screaming with fury.
What about the sacred Tootsie Fruitsie Ice Cream scene, you fool!
Well yes, I was coming to that.
A Day at the Races, despite its length, contains remarkably little comedy.
I don't mean what there is isn't funny. I just mean there's not much of it about. Let's look at the main comedy sequences now.
1. Tootsie Fruitsie Ice Cream
Yes, I do think this scene is mildly funny, in a straightforward kind of way. But it's a self-contained sketch that you could give to any comic and straight man and they'd get just as much fun out of it. (Indeed, it reads uncannily like an Abbott and Costello sketch.) Not only is it not tailored to Groucho and Chico, it actually violates the terms of their usual relationship.
Chico can sometimes get the better of Groucho in anti-logical argument, but this is a simple bit of sucker-fleecing, with Groucho cast uncomfortably as the dope and Chico as the wily huckster. In other words, Chico is behaving rationally and logically and cleverly, and Groucho's being taken for a ride. Funny this may be, but it's not the Marx Brothers, at least not the Marx Brothers I love best.
You can't have it both ways. I like the bit in At The Circus with the midget and Chico and the cigars, but every book on the movie dismisses the scene because it is 'out of character'. If you don't find it funny, fine, but if 'out of character' bothers you, then the Tootsie Fruitsie ice cream sketch should be a complete write-off.
Actually, I'm bending over backwards to be generous here. I'm not sure it's even all that funny, to be honest, once you get the idea. It doesn't really build to much of anything, and crucially it doesn't rise to any pitch of self-defeating madness, the way these things used to do at Paramount. Look at this exchange:
G: Is there a printing charge on this?
C: Just a two dollar delivery charge.
G: What do you mean, delivery charge? I'm standing right next to you.
C: Well, for such a short distance, I'll make it a dollar.
G: Couldn't I move it over here and make it fifty cents?
C: Yes, but I'd move over here and make it a dollar just the same.
G: Say, maybe I'd better open a charge account.
C: You got-a some references?
G: Well, the only one I know around here is you.
C: That's no good, you'll have to pay cash.
Now the obvious model for this is the contract scene from Opera; it has exactly the same rhythm. But compare the actual dialogue in the two scenes:
C: Now the next part I don't think you're going to like.
G: Well, your word's good enough for me. Is my word good enough for you?
C: I should say not.
G: Well that takes out two more clauses.
Or:
G: Just you put your name down there, and then the deal is legal.
C: I forgot to tell you, I can't write.
G: That's all right, there's no ink in the pen anyhow.
While Kaufman and Ryskind's writing in Opera has that beautiful contempt for logic that characterises their Groucho-Chico dialogues in Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers, with virtually every line contradicting the one preceding, and setting off on some new comic direction, what we have in the Races script is jokes. They're not bad jokes, they're just ordinary jokes. Give the script to any other comedians and, while they may not do it as well, it wouldn't need rewriting first. Whereas the 'why a duck' or 'left-handed moth' routines might as well be written in a different language.
No, they are written in a different language.
2. The call to the Florida Medical Board
Much more like it! 26 minutes in, and for me the first really great scene in the film. And why? Because Groucho has stopped sneaking about and is having fun again. Look at the lead in.Typical Thalberg scene-setting: Whitmore is overheard putting a call in to the FMB; Groucho realises it's in an effort to discover the truth about his medical standing and rushes, panicked, into his office to avert disaster.
From then on, all this is forgotten. The Hugo Hackenbush that cringes into his office is the one that tries to stop Whitmore seeing that he's giving Mrs Upjohn a horse pill; the one who says, "They can throw a horse doctor in jail for not paying his rent, too!"; the one who tries to run away when it looks like he's going to be exposed.
But the one who actually puts in the call is the Groucho we've been praying for since his first scene. All he needs to do is tell Whitmore that Dr Hackenbush is the man he claims to be. Instead of that, he deliberately infuriates him, without allaying his suspicions in the smallest degree. The cost of his actions is to make Whitmore even more belligerent and probably even more suspicious, but he doesn't care. Baiting Whitmore is a pleasure, and a public service. Suddenly, Groucho's back in the ring.
3. Hackenbush examines Stuffy
Okay, not bad. And it's got that line you all love, something about his watch stopping. Can't quite think of it for a minute. This is all reasonably funny, without ever really catching fire.
4. The wallpaper routine
Yes, it's funny, and I'll bet it was a riot on the road-show try-outs. But it's a bit basic; it's not classic stuff. It's slapstick. It's not the Chevalier impersonations.
5. The Harpo-Chico whistling translation scene
The first example of what will become a staple of the later films, almost always including a bit where Harpo mimes the contours of a shapely woman's body and Chico thinks he means a snake. Quite funny, but more ground lost to MGM literalism. At Paramount, it may be that Harpo is simply choosing not to speak, because it is annoying. Here, we learn that he cannot speak, perhaps because of laryngeal disease or some form of mental abnormality. Not as funny, that's for sure.
6. Mrs Upjohn's examination
For my money, the film's one and only classic, fully sustained and imaginatively developed comedy sequence. Insults, absurdity, anarchy; the beautiful repetition of the hand-washing; the three Dr Steinbergs being introduced to each other; Harpo and Chico lathering Dumont for a shave; Harpo taking her pulse; Chico yelling, "X-ray! X-ray! All about the operation!"; Groucho asking, "How is it that a dame like that never gets sick?"
The trick is in first establishing a premise, then tweaking it, then undermining it, and then, and only then, going bananas with it. The result should be the kind of laughter that builds too aggressively, so that you end up choking and sweating, half-hoping that there will be a break for you to breathe and swallow before the next majestic assault upon reason, and half-hoping that there won't.
This is what the Marx Brothers do, and in this film, I suggest, they only do it here.
7. The racetrack finale
Actually, I'm stretching things a bit even including this among the comedy sequences. The race itself is played dead straight, and the only funny stuff is to be found beforehand, in the Brothers' efforts to postpone it. These moments, like so much else, are both a Rank Xerox imitation of A Night at the Opera and a vastly less effective one.
As for the race itself, what Halliwell calls a "spectacularly well integrated racecourse climax" is an almost total dead loss. Not Marx Brothers comedy; not any kind of comedy.
Yes, this is devil's advocacy, from a man who loves The Cocoanuts and Room Service, and tires of hearing that Duck Soup is their best film, and sometimes just gets a bit grumpy for no good reason at all. I have nothing against this film, truly.
It's pleasant viewing, it's nicely made, and the boys are for the most part in energetic form. But I just don't get its reputation as among the very finest. Where are all the funny bits? When you think how many laughs Horse Feathers crams into 67 minutes, surely there should be a few more in the 105 minutes we get of this?
The real mystery is how something this derivative could have taken so much effort. According to Louvish, it went through six screenplays, with fourteen incorporated outlines and treatments and the fruits of five touring vaudeville scripts, only to result in the most slavish copy of a previous success audiences had experienced prior to Ghostbusters 2.
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17 comments:
As a video editor, one of these days I plan on getting around to re-editing this to around 70 minutes...
That would help, but funnier material would be even better.
True, but perhaps leaving the Marxes comedy, and taking AWAY the motivation will make it funnier...
It's a good job Thalberg's not around to read all this.
Excellent piece. As fine as A Day At The Races is, it's too often bunched together with A Night At The Opera as the second of the last two great films the Marx Brothers did (with much thanks to Thalberg). Perhaps people felt this way originally because they remembered these were two major hits--and the team's last major hits--with similar titles and stories. Or perhaps it's because A Day At The Races is so clearly superior to the rest of their MGM work. But you describe something here which is not discussed that much in books and articles about them--that the difference in quality between these films (while not quite Night and Day) is huge, and clearly points to where the team is going.
As to the specific routines, I might rate the examination of Stuffy a bit higher (it's always nice to have all three main brothers in it together), but the point, as you note, is how regimented the comedy is, within the Thalberg formula. It's actual routines that stop and start like musical numbers, not the free-floating anarchy that represents them at their best (and is their natural habitat in the Paramounts).
There is some comedy in-between, of course, and there are even moments, like the stuff they do during the whole "Blue Venetian Waters" section (including Groucho dancing), that is pretty funny, and almost feels like anything can happen, but you're right--it wouldn't really fit into the MGM mold set by Thalberg so it never quite takes off. (I assume you've seen the photos suggesting material from this sequence was cut.)
By the way, for better or worse, I'd guess the Tootsie Fruitsie scene is their third-most famous routine.
This is beautifully argued, & I agree totally -- except for one thing, which I'll get to in a minute. And unlike your wife, MY wife would agree with you! (She decided to watch every Marx Bros. movie in chronological order. She loved every Paramount film. She wasn't crazy about "A Night at the Opera," but tolerated it. But when she got to "A Day At the Races" she felt it violated their characters & hated its endlessness so much that she suddenly decided to cancel the Marx Bros. festival right there!)
So what was it I DIDN'T agree with? Well, my wife & I don't think that the examination scene is any funnier than the Tootsy-Frootsy scene. Why? So many reasons. The obvious male stunt double for Dumont (keep track of her hair for the biggest -- unintentional -- laugh in the scene), the unfunny cruelty in the physical abuse she takes, which is nothing like the kind of ribbing she gets in the earlier films. Groucho's obviously miserable facial expression as he washes his hands over & over & over again for a pitifully small laugh. And there's more, but my memory is damaged (I'm sick & have had four brain surgeries for real), so I can't remember the other reasons. But it's not funny. Were you just being nice? ;)
By the way, what if they wrote a whole 'nother Paramount Marx Brothers movie -- & nobody knew about it? Well, I started writing one, & when I got sick, two brilliant fellows finished it more spectacularly than I could ever have dreamed. We did it by using the best material from the Paramount writers that was never used in the Paramount films (extracted from the very best episodes of the Flywheel, Shyster & Flywheel radio scripts). We also wrote a whole mess of funny new jokes & routines, acknowledging the 21st century but only in the right, nonsensical manner, preserving the characters the way YOU like them, & throwing in some funny & tuneful (if I do say so myself) ultra-'30s-Kalmar-&-Ruby-style songs. The show is called The Most Ridiculous Thing You Ever Hoid. It beat out hundreds of entrants to win a prize, got featured in a new musicals festival, ran in a sold-out Off-Broadway run that was extended as long as the theater was available but was still way too short, got a few rave reviews -- & disappeared. We had FANTASTIC actors doing the Marx Brothers. Know anyone who'd like to put it on again? Here's the website: www.ridiculousthingthemusical.com. There's also a Facebook page. -- Andy (Viner) Seiler
Call me crazy, but I can't spot that double at all, even with zoom and frame advance... Looks like Mags all the way to me...
I have a question about the wallpapering scene. I first noticed a still from it in the AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY, next to the definition of "slapstick." I've seen A DAY AT THE RACES on TV, on DVD and on the big screen over the course of the last four decades. I've read synopses of it many times, and many critiques. But never in my life have I ever seen this scene. I can't believe I've blocked it out of my mind. I don't have a copy of it at the moment. So I can't verify its absence. Does anybody else have the same question? Which is: "Has the wallpaper scene been cut from American prints
?"
I can only assume the answer to this question is 'no', but since I cannot ultimately comment with authority on American prints of the film I'll hand it over... but I'm guessing you really have just blocked it out of your mind.
Incidentally, while we're on the subject of you crazy Americans, an old saw often repeated in the books when the two Harpo and the black chorus numbers are mentioned, is that they are often cut from American showings of these films. I know they are considered contentious, but are they really ever actually cut out?
Matthew, you have said:
"...An old saw often repeated in the books when the two Harpo and the black chorus numbers are mentioned, is that they are often cut from American showings of these films. I know they are considered contentious, but are they really ever actually cut out?"
In the suburbs of New York, when I watched Marx Brothers movies frequently in the early seventies, as broadcast from stations in New York, those particular songs were edited out of A DAY AT THE RACES. This was less than ten years after the Voting Rights Act was passed. As late as 1965, African Americans were barred from voting in certain states. A lot of old Hollywood movies from forty years before were shown on TV and quite often scenes showing black people in degrading situations were cut. Notice that when Harpo plays the horn, we can hear people saying "Who dat man?" I think someone even calls him Gabriel. Lena Horne, who made movies around the same time as the Marx Brothers, was very vocal in the decades afterward about how painful it was to be forced to grin, act naive and, in short, bow to the white authority figures in her movies. Time heals certain wounds, and now these scenes tend not to influence anybody's outlook on race. These movies are shown uncut frequently on Turner Classic Movies and other networks devoted to classic cinema. But when I was about twelve (circa 1972) there were still a lot of grown-ups who expected subservience from non-whites. Groucho was horribly embarrassed by Sam Wood's attitude toward blacks. In short, even when he was making the movie, Groucho was uneasy about its racism.
So yes, they did cut this scene. Good to hear they don't so much anymore.
If those stories about Wood are true, then I dare say Groucho was uneasy about his attitudes, but if by 'its' you mean the film's, then I'd need evidence.
I've never heard Groucho or anyone connected with the making of the films claim that they had a problem with either of those two sequences. The word 'racism' is an uncomfortable fit for the (at worst) unthinking, but not remotely derogatory, reinforcing of popular cliche that underpins these scenes.
For Groucho on the subject of Sam Woos, THE MARX BROTHERS SCRAPBOOK is the book to read. It was published in 1973 or so. The editor, Richard J. Anabile (it may be Anobile) interviewed a number of geriatrics who worked with, wrote for or actually were (one of) the Marx Brothers. Groucho is quite uninhibited here. (He did actually sue Anabile in an effort to prevent the book from being published, but I believe the book had already just been published by the time Groucho sued.) In any case, the book is a vast compendium of Marxiana. I remember that Groucho found the way Wood talked about black people very offensive. He also never forgave Wood for announcing Thalberg's death as follows: "Hey, that little brown guy is dead." Groucho revered Irving Thalberg, who was the one person in authority at M-G-M who seemed to want the Marx Brothers to be successful. Having read the book in 1974, when I was fourteen, I can only say that my memory is that Groucho did not lke the way black actors were treated on the set by Wood. We must, of course, take into account that, in the early seventies, Groucho was noticing the young people who were championing DUCK SOUP, a movie he'd never previously praised but which now he said was their best, were long-haired hippie types. In short, Groucho began to wear his liberalism on his sleeve. Wood may have been no worse than many mid-twentieth century white men in his attitudes about race. Certainly Groucho would have felt a hint of anti-Semitism in Wood's very flippant way of referring to Thalberg. "That little brown guy" as a descriptive, is not overtly negative. Thalberg was little, and, especially with tuberculosis, probably not as marshmallow white as Sam Wood. The sleight may have simply been perceived, not intended. One recalls Groucho's famous quip at a country club which would not let him use the pool because he was jewish: "Since my son is only half-jewish, can he go in up to his knees?" We can look at A DAY IN THE RACES and not see anything obviously racist. But if it is remembered that, in the 1950's, the NAACP petitioned successfully to have a major network remove BEAULAH, a sitcom about a maid, starring Hattie McDaniel (who'd played Mammy in GONE WITH THE WIND), from the air; a show which had been making a lot of money, the profound embarrassment many black people felt over such well-intentioned portrayals may be more believable.
I think it’s Dumont up until they shout “Xray!”. If you pause it at 1:15:06 when Harpo mimes handing out papers, you can see the profile of the stand in who’s got a more pronounced jaw line. However, just prior to “Xray!” it’s all Dumont and that it the time she takes the most punishment. Can’t think of a reason they’d put a stunt double in at that point, maybe Dumont got fed up and wanted to clean herself up.
You're crazy!
Well I'll have another look, but I'm not making a nickel out of it.
I borrowed a DVD of this at the library and found the wallpaer scene intact. I had, indeed, blocked it out of my mind. It is such a brief gag within the larger scene in Groucho's apartment that it just blended in with the rest of it. A still picture I've seen, showing Chico holding a bucket and a brush and the blonde actress drenched in paste is not duplicated in the movie, so that is another reason, I think, for my thinking there was no such scene. The commentary track points out that there are some things which make this movie less than it could have been: Groucho put the kibosh to a plan to have him sing a song about Hackenbush (a la "Hooray For Captain Spaulding.") He sang it live many times and there is a record he made in the fifties of it. A little Tin Pan lley-style song by Kalmar and Ruby, "Message From The Man In The Moon," was recorded by Alan Jones (and the audio is an extra on the DVD) but was either never filmed or was simply cut. It is much different in tone from the stiff music of the water carnival. Phrases from it are sung at the very end. It was much lighter, bouncier music than the rest of the music in this movie. I found the musical bit with the black chorus and dancers pretty good. The commentator said Duke Ellington's Orchestra probably played the instruments. I'd love to know what Groucho thought about it, but, I concede your point, Matthew -- I can't find any source in which he discusses it. I lot of the books I read decades ago are in boxes and I am of low energy these days. The Marx Brothers are in blackface in this scene, and, as in DUCK SOUP, a sense that they are spoofing stereotypes runs across my mind. But! I don't know.
That's really my point about the black chorus: it's so full of energy and happiness and so obviously meant to inspire fraternal feelings... yes it seems heavy and to some degree ignorant now, but really, there are worse things.
Wish my DVD had 'Man in the Moon' as an audio extra. All I got was a documentary and a load of unrelated cartoons.
Very well done. Here's what I think:
A Day At The Races was the first Marx Brothers film I remember seeing as a child. I remember feeling odd prepubescent stirrings of attraction for Dr Hackenbush, which probably explains everything.
However, compared to A Night At The Opera, it doesn't compare (and I won't even bother to bring any of the Paramount films into this except to say The Cocoanuts is the least of these and beats it by a mile). I like At The Circus far, far more. I like The Big Store more (minus the ridiculous finale hoo ha). Let's face it - as hoo ha goes, you can't get much hoo-ier (or ha-ier for that matter) than that preposterous (and I use the term unkindly) Blue Venetian Waters *thing* (what it is supposed to be, I don't know).
The exploding piano is old hat but great. The Harpo and Chico game of charades is really great. The phone call is great. But he wallpaper scene is an imposition almost as wrong as the roller skating in The Big Store, despite the bros pluckiness of delivery. There is too much silly slapstick and in this film and not enough clever Marx Brothers.
I saw it as a double bill with A Night At The Opera at the Astor in Melbourne this year. It was a great night of course, but sadly, this film sagged. So I promptly watched it again at home at a decent hour. It wore me out, hanging out for the moments when the bros were being 'themselves'. There are quite a few, but the rest of it beats you up so badly, you lose the will etc. Can anybody watch Harpo's horse riding stunt extra without embarrassment? Big Store style big cringe for me.
Mind you, I still love it in principle. Groucho has some good lines and when they're not trying to making Harpo and Chico into pathetic half-wits, they're still Harpo and Chico (especially Harpo). A movie with any good bits of Marx Brothers is better than pretty much any other film in my book.
Plus Groucho remains weirdly attractive in it.
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