no wonder it bombed - it's a masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (10 June 2004)

I'd like to start out by saying that I've been laughing at Duck Soup for twenty years. I always expect the film to feel stale after too much re-viewing but, dammit, I laughed hardest the tenth time I saw it!
Sometimes I think that every long running movie series has to contain one very atypical, very arty entry that polarizes viewers. For Godzilla, it's actually the quite serious and violent first film. For the Marx Brothers, it's Duck Soup, a movie completely devoid of sentiment, as Hollywood understands it (there's no happy couples on display here), and internal logic. It's actually quite a challenging viewing experience; Duck Soup has many unpleasant things to say about war and government, and the barrage of jokes (ranging from broad slapstick to puns to sexual innuendo) can actually be tiring, especially since it hurts to laugh continuously for over an hour.
We don't make 'em like this anymore. Is this a broad comedy, a political satire, or a lavish musical? Of course, it's all three, a strange cross-breed of genres that would give today's concept-oriented studio execs a heart attack. So many modern movies are monotonous in concept and execution, but Duck Soup zings all over the map and somehow manages to excel in every way. The musical numbers are lush and hilarious, and bizarrely, the special effects beat almost anything attempted by science fiction until the 1970s! Groucho's verbal comedy is beautifully complimented by Harpo's pantomime, and even Chico does okay with his stereotypical Italian schtick. Far from being one trick ponies, the Marx Brothers can do just about anything and everything, which is why they remain more popular - and relevant - than any other old time comedians, including Chaplin, who sometimes gets more credit as an artiste. At the end of the day, the Marx Brothers are funnier, smarter, and more lovable (in their mangy way) than their rivals.
Since this movie is so very strange, I can understand why it occasionally gets a negative review. It's so far ahead of its time that we're still catching up to it! (Yes, it is ahead of its time, and yes, it is a satire - pay no attention to people who say otherwise)
Too bad comedy is so dreadful these days. Groucho's nudge-nudge wink-wink sex jokes are a thousand times funnier, and more provocative, than the crass and explicit commentaries we get on the subject today. And the Marx Brothers understood, better than anyone else, the importance of having a good "straight man" - hence Louis Calhern as the long-suffering Trentino and Margaret Dumont, who deserves some kind of posthumous Oscar for allowing the Brothers to torment her so.
In short, this is the funniest seventy minutes of cinema ever made. It's the only Marx Brothers movie that dedicates itself wholeheartedly to pure anarchy and biting criticism, and so it's the only film in the series that might qualify as art. But why try to classify it? It's just awesome.