A Night at the Opera

Released in 1935, A Night at the Opera is a musical comedy featuring Groucho, Chico and Harpo of the Marx Brothers. The plot of the movie revolves around the Brothers' attempts to assist and unite two opera singers whilst also wreaking havoc on a number of snooty socialites. Despite being called A Night at the Opera, the movie is not overly bogged down by musical numbers (though there is a piano routine by Chico and a harp routine by Harpo). The movie contains a number of good gags, including the stateroom scene, the contract negotiation between Groucho and Chico and the sabotage of the opera at the film's climax. Though entertaining, the movie has some problems with pacing (due in part to WWII-era censors removing scenes and dialogue that referenced Italy). Also, those unfamiliar with the works of the Marx Brothers are likely to find that the impact of their gags and style has been lessened by decades of homages and reinterpretations.

Rating: 72%

(Image from amazon.ca)

Entertainment! by Gang Of Four

Peanut butter and chocolate, lemon and lime, punk rock and badly misinformed Marxist arguments - history is just full of great combos like these, and while only two of them can (so far, science?) be eaten, at least the third makes for a pretty decent album to blast from the speakers of my Honda Accord LX with leather interior as I'm driving through the poor parts of town. Solidarity my friends! After slogging away with the other proles for 10 hours today at work I don't feel like creating an analogy to describe Gang Of Four's sound that at first would seem hilarious and witty but on second read would turn out to make no sense whatsoever for describing any type of music, but here's some links, so maybe you can crack open some PBR to listen for a second. I also just relistened to Franz Ferdinand's first album and that one is fun, but not fun enough that I feel like writing about it (and I barely wrote about this album if that tells you something).

RATING: 81%

FRANZ FERDINAND: 75%

The Cocoanuts

Hey, it was 1929, and sound pictures were only two years old, so maybe I should give this one a bit of a pass. See, this suffers from the same problem as a lot of later Marx Brothers movies. The parts with the brothers are great, but then for some fucking reason there's a bunch of terrible songs sung by minor characters scattered throughout. But here, as opposed to the late 30s, I'll let it slide, because like I said the sound thing was new so filmmakers figured they had to fit in all kinds of different sounds, kind of like when you see a 3D movie they have to have a can thrown right at your face or somebody swing around a broom or other long object. Anyway, it's useless to describe the plot, because as in most Marx Brothers movies there barely is one, so in conclusion this is not the worst Marx Brothers movie but it's certainly in the bottom half to me.

RATING: 62%