parody of war

Rating: 10/10 (4 June 2006)

A vicious attack that one hardly feels. Perhaps the purest satire is that which passes for something else. Although this film didn't do well at the box-office, I suspect this was mostly because, released at the bottom of the depression, it concerned issues most Americans chose to ignore - to their detriment: slightly more than a half-a-decade later, they were sending their boys to fight the war that Duck Soup would have warned them about, had they cared to listen to it.
Other comedians could parody Hitler; only the Marxes could parody war (Duck Soup) and then swing around and, by parodying opera (Night at the Opera), remind us that the grand scheme of monsters doesn't amount to much compared to a sweet melody, a colorful dance, or the wink of a lover.
Without ever performing a scene from Shakespeare, the Marx Bros. brought the Bard's humor up to date.