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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The worst Marx Brothers movie? Easy, "The Big Store", 19 Feb 2005
By the time you get to "The Big Store" in working your way through the comedies of the Marx Brothers you need to remind yourself that Harpo joined the group and turned "The Three Nightingales" into "The Four Nightingales" in 1908, twenty-one years before they made their first movie, "The Cocoanuts." That is why by the time we get to "The Big Store," their tenth film in 1941 (I am not counting their 1926 silent comedy "Humor Risk") it is rather painfully obvious it is time to break up the act, but you also have to lament what great comedy was lost because talking pictures were not developed a decade earlier. Because this is the Marx Brothers, there are a few choice moments, but certainly nothing compared to what they were doing at the height of their career in "Duck Soup" and "A Night at the Opera." The story in "The Big Store" has young Tommy Rogers (Tony Martin) hoping to open up his own music conservatory with Ravelli (Chico). To raise money he sells his shares of the department store that he and his aunt, Martha Phelps (Margaret Dumont) own. The problem is that Mr. Grover (Douglass Dumbrille), the store manager, is trying to steal the store for himself and he has a group of thugs attack Tommy. So Mrs. Phelps hires a private detective, Wolf J. Flywheel (Groucho) to help out, as if this could possibly be a good thing. Harpo plays a character named Wacky (really), and Virginia Grey is Joan Sutton, the requisite love interest for Tommy. If you want a simple explanation for why "The Big Store" is a step down from the Marx Brothers' previous film, "Go West," then look no farther than the script. Buster Keaton had worked on "Go West," and there is no way he would not have helped with this one, which had a story by Nat Perrin that was then turned into a screenplay by Sid Kuller, Hal Fimberg, and Ray Golden. At this point you can only fondly recall that Marx Brothers movies used to be written by the likes of George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Besides, while the setting of a department store worked fine for Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times," it does not suit the anarchy of the Marx Brothers, which fares much better when it is set in a college, on an ocean liner, or at the opera house. Then there are the songs that Tony Martin keeps singing, where the longest, "The Tenement Symphony," is certainly the worst. When Chico finally gets around to playing "Mama Yo Quiero" on the piano you can finally relax a bit. Like the music, the romantic subplot gets in the way of the Brothers Marx as well. No wonder Groucho announced publicly that "The Big Store" would be the final film for the Marx Brothers. This is their low point and if you gave me the choice of wiping "The Big Store" from human memory along with the small measure of redemption the Marx Brothers achieved in 1946 when they filmed "A Night in Casablanca," then I think I would be willing to delete both movies. There are some moments worth from the Marx Brothers that justify watching this movie once. The scene where Flywheel first meets with Mrs. Phelps is the last good moment between Groucho and Dumont, and watching Flywheel and Ravelli try to sell "modern" bunk beds is also pretty good. The big chase scene at the end has its moments as well. But then Tony Martin keeps popping up to sing those songs and you just have to fast-forward or lose your mind. I know that the original formula for a Marx Brothers show, whether on stage or in the movies, was to combine comedy with music and romance. But when a movie makes you extol the long lost virtues of Zeppo Marx as a leading man, you know something is horribly wrong.
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