Customer Reviews

Duck Soup [Chico Marx and Zeppo Marx]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

To gain financial support from Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont), the tiny bankrupt country of Freedonia agrees to take Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) as their new president (the poor saps). Mayhem springs from Firefly's cynical and sarcastic leadership, culminating in war with the neighboring country of Sylvania. Throughout, Pinky (Harpo Marx) and Chicolini (Chico Marx) are scheming among the great and powerful, taking money from Trentino (Louis Calhern) of Sylvania, and directing Firefly's war effort. [Black & white, created in 1933, with a running time of 70 minutes.]

This movie contains some of Groucho's funniest witticisms, his badinage with Margaret Dumont producing some of the funniest lines in theatrical history. The story takes something of a backseat to the Marx brother's comedy, but this movie is first and foremost a satire of politics in general, and war and patriotism in particular. Back to the comedy, this movie is fantastically funny, containing the famous mirror scene, where Chico is dressed as Groucho, who must figure out if he is seeing his reflection or something else!

This is a great movie. The comedy is funny and clean, and can be watched by viewers of any age. I highly recommend this movie.

Duck Soup is not only the best Marx Brothers' film but it also happens to be in my personal top ten favorite movies of all time. The craziness of the four Marx Brothers cannot be described. You'll have to watch this film to truly experience the greatness of their comedic genius.

Highest recommendation possible.

The Bros. Marx fifth film just may be their greatest; a brilliant satire on government, dictatorial leaders & Fascism, it not only razzles, it dazzles. Way ahead of its time, "Duck Soup" was a commercial failure upon its release (in 1933) but is now considered immortal & rightly so.

Groucho Marx explained the film's title this way: "Take 2 turkeys, 1 goose, 4 cabbages, but no duck & mix them together...after one taste, you'll duck soup for the rest of your life."

Oo la la..."Duck Soup" is a masterpiece. Table for everyone.

What can I say? This is one of the funniest movies ever made and I believe the Marx Brothers finest movies. Each routine is silly and the Freedonia anthem is just memorable.

I rediscovered this movie after reading the new book "Hail Euphoria, Presenting the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, The Greatest War Movie Ever Made". And after reading the book, where it breaks down the script, the film biographies on the brothers, Margaret Dumont, director and more; I grew a greater appreciation for the film and ordered this DVD. The film was the last one featuring Zeppo and has some of the Marx Brothers most famous bits such as Groucho and Harpo's great mirror act, Harpo and Chico with the lemonade vendor and their none stop animated action combined with complex and humorous dialogue. The film has been legitimately hailed in a military magazine as a top 20 war movie based on the story's emotional exageration of facts used to start a war when it was all based on money. The film is approximately 55 minutes and the quality and sound is pretty good. You can even see that Groucho's mustache is actually a wide splash of grease paint.

this movie, along with "a night at the opera", are the two best marx bros movies & two of the best comedies of all time. i favor "duck soup" because of it's rapid-fire jokes while keeping to the premise (war). it will surely put a smile on your face!

This is a wonderful old movie that views as if it were a current event.

I ordered the Marx brothers "Duck Soup" on Fri Feb 06 09 via Amazon.com and received it on Mon Feb 09 09 via USPS. It's a good quality DVD, with good picture and sound. Great service from Amazon,cosmo_a_good_name_2_know and the USPS. Everything was done very well. You all deserve praise for the great service. Thanks very much.

*Somebody* has to say it, you either get this movie or you don't, and you're not some kind of idiot if you don't. This movie just fell flat with me, it relied too heavily on cheesy, nonsensical wordplay, and the Marx brothers seem to have a standard, all-purpose delivery for every single joke: fast. The famous "slow burn" scene felt amateurish to me. The lauded "anarchy" in this movie strikes me as a lame excuse for sloppy editing and writing, I guess it's easier for a scene to lead into another with no segway at all, or for pun-oriented conversations to begin and end like a light going on and off, then to make your film cohesive. Really, this is not so much a movie as a string of miscellaneous gags with a VERY flimsy story to try to tie it all together. If you want an example of classic comedy intertwining elegantly with a story watch a Chaplin or Keaton movie.

Shouldn't the Marx brothers be totally forgotten by now?

That was a fateful year, 1933. The world was on the edge of a great fall, of a deep dive, of a high jump into the abyss and the Marx Brothers could not resist and make fun of that fateful war coming, of that hateful man who had just been elected, the man with the little mustache, and our dear Groucho, the man with the big mustache played the other and won of course because the situation is totally reversed and the man with the big mustache is the leader of Freedonia, and he puts the old revolutionary uniforms out of the closets where they had been kept since the American Revolution to fight against the Italian-named ambassador of Sylvania, is it Transylvania or is it Pennsylvania, a Sylvania anyway, people who live in the woods like animals, aren't they? The time of prohibition is finished. Other more important things are at stake, freedom and healthy finances, or is it healthy embezzling? All that is kind of small and limited. In other words they are, these Marx Brothers, like burying themselves, getting out of touch. "You want to be a public nuisance?" They can't resist the offer. "How much does the job pay?" And that triggers one of those famous puns that will live forever and ever through eternity. "I have got a good mind to join the club and beat you over the head with it." You must say that is great humor, even if slightly twisted, if not frankly warped, crooked and distorted. And they don't even hesitate to edge onto the racial front and invent one of these slightly racist jokes that will survive the next atom apocalypse I guess. "The Headstrongs married the Armstrongs and that's why darkies were born." That's deep, profound, inspired, admirable, isn't it. And since we are on that line, the line of compassion, sympathy and empathy, meditate on this one. "The workers of Freedonia are demanding shorter hours." Isn't that social? But the answer of the newly appointed Roman tyrant is astounding. "We'll start by cutting their lunch hour to twenty minutes." Who said that the Marx Brothers were not social-minded? Where are the liars? To produce such humor in 1933 is quite prophetic, prophetic of a catastrophe coming up the road. When the creative intelligentsia of a country is able to bring together in one of their comedies both racist remarks and anti-labor slogans you can be sure this country is doomed to die a difficult death and definitely labor hard and painfully to give birth and deliver the next phase of its history. The next phase will require fifty millions of dead people, victims and bodies to find some regeneration. A lot worse than all the human sacrifices of the Aztecs or the Mayas. The western world, when they do things in the bloody line, they know how to inundate the earth and the soil and the fields with good warm human blood and fertilize the crops with hot human ashes. Ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt, mess to mess, trash to trash. You can always make it a joke. But that kind of regeneration and rejuvenation through and via blood, blood, and blood again, war, war and war again is unworthy of a human mind, particularly of four human minds, those of the Marx Siblings who are more underlings than siblings in that line of inspiration. That's not the best film of these comedians and clowns and the subtlety of the discourse is definitely too fine for me to understand it, I guess, not to say appreciate it. They might have been better inspired to wait for Charles Chaplin to come with his Dictator and let this other comedian use real humane humor to debunk the tyrant. But that was many light years ahead of their antics. That was the last time the four siblings were together on the same screen. Zeppo Marx was to get out of the band or gang after this duck soup that killed the ducks for sure but produced no delicatessen soup.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines