Not What I'd Expected from the "Brilliant" Marx Brothers

Rating: 3/10 (28 August 2005)

I saw this movie on Turner Movie Classics. In his introduction, Robert Osborne describes how when this movie was first released it bombed at the box office and almost bankrupted its studio. Watching it over 70 years later, I can see why.
The Marx brothers have become shorthand for American slapstick comedy, something I took as a given, never having seen them in anything substantial. Now having seen them in a feature length movie, my impression of them is pretty negative. Groucho, the leader, is the only one who appears to have any talent, and although he does get off some good lines, he is mostly just an irritating schmuck. Chico is little more than an Italian stereotype. Zeppo was barely in the film. I absolutely could not stand Harpo. His mute, self-satisfied, willful destructiveness started out as just weird, but quickly turned annoying and eventually unwatchable.
I would like to know what happened between the time this film was summarily rejected by the viewing public and recently when The Library of Congress placed it on the National Film Registry to change peoples' minds about it. I'll stick with the Three Stooges.