Arthur Sheekman (1901–1978)

I don't get the appeal of the Marx Brothers. If I were contemporary to that era I'd be a crank complaining about how the talkies ruined film comedy. The silent greats like Keaton & Chaplin created complex Rube Goldberg gags where the visual punchline was funny in an of itself, but there was also tremendous satisfaction in all the different moving parts, the twists and turns, leading inexorably to it. This is just a string of one-liners, or not even a string -- a random sequence only very show more loosely bound by the thinnest of plots. show less

The Marx Brothers stow away on an ocean liner and meet some gangsters.

2/4 (Indifferent).

Mostly boring. There are some good bits, but they're not good enough to make it worth sitting through.

A film starring the Marx Brothers (Paramount, 1933).

Groucho is put in charge of a country.

B (Good).

It's hilarious, up until it keeps going for 10 or 15 minutes after it should have ended.

(Jan. 2023)

Four stowaways get mixed up with gangsters while running riot on an ocean liner.
(source: TMDb)