Groucho was great, Chico and Harpo good

Rating: Null/10 (23 June 2005)

I'm too cheap for cable, or to rent or buy videos, but I was lucky to be in a motel with cable the night Buck Henry co-hosted a TCM presentation of his favorite films.
As a young child I watched Groucho on 'You Bet Your Life', which I saw recently in reruns on a PBS station. I've always enjoyed his particular brand of humor. And in this movie he was fantastic. His combination of wit and rapid-fire delivery is rarely seen these days--Lauren Graham on 'Gilmore Girls' comes close, though her humor is different. Jim Carrey and Robin Williams have their own unique styles but they don't really match Groucho. If he wasn't ad-libbing--and it sure seemed like he was but that was apparently part of his talent--the writing was outstanding. The film was rated TV-G but came very close to being bawdy, though that's part of Groucho's charm. Yes, he got laughs by insulting people; Groucho and Don Rickles were masters of that. To me, both comedians are too easy to like for the insults to seem hurtful.
Chico and Harpo were quite good too. Chico could have been a fine comic actor on his own, with a delivery that ALMOST matched that of his zany brother.
At first I thought Harpo was every bit as talented as Tony Papenfuss and John Voldstad of 'Newhart', but later I realized I had that backwards. I finally saw how truly gifted Harpo was at facial expressions, and he made his character truly likable. Then there was the dispute with the lemonade vendor (including the trading of hats which I wasn't paying enough attention to), and of course the great mirror routine, which I had seen with Lucille Ball but didn't really appreciate.
Most of the characters were not supposed to be funny, and it added to this movie's quality that these characters were done completely straight. I never even noticed who Zeppo was, and while all the actors seemed talented, he evidently didn't match his brothers' particular skills.
This is definitely one of the great movies.