Anarchy with a capital "A"!

Rating: Null/10 (21 November 2006)

"Duck Soup" is considered by many to be the best film comedy the Marx Bros. ever made, and even though it is not one of my personal favorites, I do enjoy it very much. This boisterous political satire is absolutely rife with visual gags from Harpo and verbal humor from Groucho & Chico. The plot of "Duck Soup" is quite negligible: the fun-loving Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) becomes the newly-appointed dictator of Freedonia and, just for kicks and giggles, declares war on the neighboring Sylvania. The wealthy widow responsible for Firefly's appointment is none other than Gloria Teasdale (Margaret Dumont), who mistakenly envisions Firefly as the epitome of virtue and refinement. Later on, Firefly attracts the attention of two dimwitted Sylvanian spies named Chicolini (Chico) and Pinky (Harpo), who eventually join forces with him.
My favorite scenes from "Duck Soup" include the following (but please do yourself a favor and watch this classic film first before you read on). To begin with, who could forget the classic "trick mirror" scene between Firefly and Pinky? Firefly oversleeps and arrives late for his inauguration as dictator of Freedonia; he wastes no time at all insulting his sponsor Mrs. Teasdale with a barrage of puns, and he sings a wacky song that explains how he intends to run the country. When Pinky rides through the streets on horseback as Paul Revere, he suddenly spots a young lady undressing in front of a window; the musical accompaniment shifts abruptly from the "Light Cavalry Overture" to "Ain't She Sweet." Chicolini and Pinky go through a good deal of verbal and visual gags during their initial secret conference with Sylvanian ambassador Trentino (Louis Calhern). While inside Firefly's conference room, Firefly offers Chicolini a job as his secretary of war, but first they exchange a few "important questions"; Pinky later drops in and shows Firefly a series of tattoos, some of which are animated! And finally, Chicolini and Pinky get the better of an infuriated lemonade vendor (Edgar Kennedy) by playing a silly little hat game; Pinky later sticks his bare legs and feet into the lemonade tank, thus driving all the customers away.
As wonderful as "Duck Soup" is, it's a shame that it doesn't feature a piano solo from Chico or a harp solo from Harpo. In addition, even though the film runs a brief sixty-nine minutes, it does tend to drag during the final battle scene. But these issues are very minor considering "Duck Soup"'s status among all the various classic film comedies. This is a film that simply cannot be ignored.