Review: A Night at the Opera

Plot? Um…I’ll give it a go. Groucho Marx plays Otis B. Driftwood, a supposed promoter, who conspires with Chico Marx’s Fiorello to help a pair of young opera singers and lovers (Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle), at the expense of a pompous opera star Lassparri (Walter Woolf King). Margaret Dumont plays a wealthy old widow and Driftwood’s patroness, who also figures into the plot. Harpo Marx plays Tomasso, the brow-beaten dresser for Lassparri, whilst Sig Rumann plays Gottlieb, owner of the opera company.

 

Buster Keaton, I think was kind of a genius filmmaker and innovator. I’ve enjoyed several of Charlie Chaplin’s films. I’m a fan of Monty Python, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, author Douglas Adams, “Seinfeld”, Billy Connolly, you name it. My sense of humour is varied. The Marx Brothers, however…I just don’t appreciate one little bit. Oh I can certainly see their influence on subsequent comedians, for sure. Just look at the pantomiming Harpo, who surely must’ve influenced Teller from the popular comic-magician-debunking duo Penn & Teller, among many others. But I personally don’t find any of them remotely funny. If you do, that’s cool, everyone has different tastes, especially in comedy.

 

This is supposedly their best-known and best-loved film, but this 1935 comedy from director Sam Wood (“A Day at the Races”, “Goodbye, Mr Chips”) just didn’t do anything for me, except drive me nucking futs. It’s mostly Groucho, to be honest. I know Chevy Chase is a flippant smart-arse in the “Fletch” movies, but it never really got in the way of telling an actual story, I don’t think. Groucho isn’t even concerned with convincingly playing a character, let alone taking the plot seriously. As a result, there ends up not even really being a plot, that I could tell. Certainly no one was paying attention to it. The character may be named Otis B. Driftwood, but it’s really just Julius Henry Marx playing a character (Groucho) supposedly playing another character (Mr. Driftwood), but really just Groucho playing Groucho. It’s all schtick all the time, wrapped in caricature and it’s incredibly annoying in addition to rarely being funny (At least the “Fletch” movies, particularly the first one, were hilarious). Groucho’s jokes are incredibly glib and flippant to the point where he seems too cool for the film, and it resulted in me being taken out of the experience entirely. He seems like he’s above the film as an outside commentator whilst actually in the film supposedly playing a character. If all Groucho cares about is getting his one-liners in and very few are remotely funny, why should I care about anything? Also, his painted-on moustache is just plain stupid and it’s high time someone called him out on it. As for Harpo, he’s the constantly mugging, child-like silent comedian, whilst Chico’s schtick is to bea the onea who talka witha the funnya accenta, pizza pie mamma mia! Yeah, that shit doesn’t get old fast. And having watched five of their films, believe me when I tell you, they’re all the fucking same. I just don’t understand why the Marx Brothers got into the movie business when they refuse to play actual characters because they are already playing characters: Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. They’re vaudeville comedians, best suited to the stage or television. Putting them in fictional stories with characters is just pointless because they are only interesting in getting their schtick in. Groucho’s so unflappable and glib you want to punch him on the nose.

 

So very little of this was funny to me, though comedy is subjective, so don’t just take my word for it. However, the contract scene made no sense to me whatsoever. Why was that meant to be funny? I’ll admit the bit where Groucho orders room service is funny. The list keeps on growing, and I’m pretty sure Chico orders two hard boiled eggs several times. Another good line from Groucho is ‘He’s half asleep and half-nelson’, referring to a drowsy Harpo grabbing onto a nurse. However, the scene where everyone and their dog keeps piling into their tiny room is so stupidly unbelievable that it isn’t funny. Another scene where Harpo makes a sandwich and includes Groucho’s cigar and Chico’s tie is another example of them trying to be funny through sheer absurdity, as though it’s a joke itself. It’s not. It’s just an idiot pretending to eat a tie for the sake of a cheap laugh that never comes. There’s a lot of those such scenes in Marx Brothers films, and I think the chaos itself is meant to be amusing (Just as Groucho’s flippancy and constantly ruining the reality of a scene is meant to be hilarious), but not to me. If you really want to know just how not on this film’s comedic wavelength I was, I actually thought Kitty Carlisle and the songs were the best thing here. ‘Alone’ is clearly the film’s highlight. If you’ve read any of my reviews, you probably know that me and musicals go together like Vegemite and non-Australian taste buds, so let that one sink in for a minute. At least the singing is accomplished and able to be appreciated by me. Harpo plays the harp at one point, which is lovely, but not funny and would get progressively less lovely when he’d do the same damn thing in subsequent films.

 

This just isn’t my thing. I felt like it was all schtick all of the time, and the schtick was counterproductive to getting invested in the narrative or characters (Apparently director Wood wasn’t an especially humorous man and not one to allow improv. I can only imagine how many headaches the Marx Brothers gave the guy, and in fairness, vice versa). If the humour was actually humorous, I could be forgiving, but I’m afraid I just found it all rage-inducing and frankly rather boring. The songs are OK, there’s a couple of funny moments, but for the most part I wanted to punch my television. With my entire body. I can understand the influence of The Marx Brothers, but to me, those they have influenced are vastly superior to the originators. The screenplay, such as it is, was written by George Kaufman (whose plays served as the basis for earlier Marx Brothers films “The Cocoanuts” and “Animal Crackers”) and Morris Ryskind (“The Cocoanuts”, “Animal Crackers”, “Stage Door”), from a story by James K. McGuinness (“Rio Grande”). If you love The Marx Brothers (as many apparently do), good for you, and indeed you will find many positive reviews of their films. This is just my take. I think they pretty much suck.

 

Rating: D+