The Cocoanuts
It was my pick for film club. We hadn’t watched a comedy in a while, so I picked the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts.
The Cocoanuts came out in 1929, just over a year after the first all-talking movie, Lights of New York, and less than two years after the first part-talkie, The Jazz Singer. The film reworked (for better or worse) their hit Broadway show for the silver screen.
It’s groundbreaking by being the brothers’ first feature film and for pushing the boundaries of sound. But apart from Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, I can easily do without the rest of the film. (Oh, and Zeppo, whose role is almost non-existent.)
The Cocoanuts‘ plot — a robbery scheme set at a resort during the Florida real-estate bubble of the 1920s — is a thin filament upon which the Marx Brothers’ routines and several show-stopping songs and dances are hung. And by show-stopping, I mean the show comes to a grinding halt for most of the songs and the overly long dance numbers.
The musical numbers in the brothers’ later movies — particularly when they sang them — added laughs and kept the movies moving.