I’ve never seen a Marx Brothers film but they came strongly recommended by several folks over the last year. As a fan of Comedy, I knew I just had to watch one and picked “Duck Soup” due to high critical acclaim. The film is about the bankrupt country of Freedonia and its march towards war with neighbor Sylvania, easily avoidable but unattainable to the idiots running the show. Our main players are Leader of Freedonia Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho), his secretary (Zeppo), and Sylvania spies Chicolini and Pinky (Chico and Harpo). It’s rather impossible (and impractical) to summarize the film any further.
As somebody who was raised Bugs Bunny, and Monty Python, and Mel Brooks, and Family Guy, I immediately picked up on the tone of this movie. It is undeniable that the comedy DNA of the Marx Brothers reaches down to every irreverent comedy we enjoy today and I respect them for that.
But I did not like this movie. And I wanted to like it so much! Despite puns, jokes, and silly antics being dispensed at a million miles a second, I thought the film was hardly funny. Worthy of a few smirks, yeah. A couple pauses to think, “that’s a clever bit.” Yup. But man, I just couldn’t get into this one. I kept waiting for it to be funny and never got there. There’s no real character story to fall back on and the straight-playing supporting Cast added nothing. Critics make much about this being a political satire (in the league of “The Great Dictator” and “Dr. Strangelove”—two films I adore) but I found the commentary to be shallow by modern standards.
Influential? Undoubtedly. Good? Not to me.