Saturday, January 17, 2009

#85: A Night at the Opera (Marx Brothers)


This is my first experience with the Marx Brothers. If this was the 1930's, I might have found them funny, but not so in the present. Humor is very difficult to judge over time since it changes so much, which is why Stephan Pastis of Pearls Before Swine is always ranting against long-running cartoons that no longer employ a relevant sense of humor. To add to the disconnect, the movie is full of opera singing, which is not fun to listen to. The whole movie felt like a Saturday Night Live with the scenes fading to black and entering new and different scenarios that had little transition. By today's standards, this was a discombobulated mess. Ah well, can't win 'em all.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love Night at the Opera but perhaps you might have better luck with one of the Marx Brothers earlier films. Either way, they have definitely stood the test of time overall in my opinion. ;)

June 15, 2009 at 11:11 PM  
Blogger Josh said...

I completely agree with your post. This movie was not funny to me, and the opera music made it even worse.

Hopefully "Duck Soup" is a better Marx Brothers film, since it's also on the AFI list.

March 5, 2010 at 5:59 PM  

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