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The Cocoanuts

The Cocoanuts

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's one of the best
Review: First off, lets get some stuff straight. This is a great start for the Marx Brothers. Second, The sound can get bad but please still buy it. Third, Zeppo does not star in it. He's in it for like 4 minutes and then he doesn't say anything. After 10 minutes of the movie he turns into Harpo. Fourth, this can be interrupted by some dances.But this is an awsome movie, and I recommend it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Raw laughter
Review: Granted the film is faded and has its pops and crackles, yet you can still witness the first stages of a classic Marx film. It has unforgettable moments such as the confrontation of Groucho and Chico misunderstanding each others' accents in the classic scene known as "Why a duck". It also features the beginning of Chico and Harpo as pick-pockets, and chasing girls. It's a must-see for Harpo lovers because rarely does he ever "get the girl" in the films that later followed. It's a highly recommended film for Marx Broes collectors & fanatics.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Why Doesn't Groucho have top billing
Review: I have to say this is a great movie, who whouldn`t like to see Harpo pickpocket his own brother. Great script great gags and an all around good movie

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The first all-talking, all-singing musical motion picture
Review: I've always thought it would be interesting to pair this film with Singing In the Rain, because all the technical glitches satirized in the later movie were very real during the production of this one. While Jolson's The Jazz Singer predates The Cocoanuts, this was the first musical to have a full-length, credit-to-credit soundtrack.

As such, it's often goofy, ludicrous, clumsily staged and badly timed. The songs are... well, what can you say about a movie that opens with a song called "The Monkey Doodle-Doo"? And all that disappears when Groucho launches into a routine, such as the famous "viaduct" ("I'm all right, how are you?") routine with his brother Chico.

An interesting piece of trivia about this movie (and others with the Marx brothers) -- having grown up in live theater, they were unable NOT to work the audience. Unfortunately, the audience on the set consisted of the stagehands, sound crew, and other technicians, who would bust up laughing and ruin the shots. Yet when the crew kept quiet, the Marx brothers assumed, almost subconsciously, that their jokes were falling flat -- so they'd make up new ones. Too bad the rushes for this film have no doubt long decomposed; it'd be a howl to see what they did *first*.

Last comment: in December 1991, while on a family holiday, I found myself driving to the town of Cocoa Beach, Florida... over a viaduct leading from the mainland. It was all I could do to keep the rental Chevy out of the surf.

Rated three stars, for Groucho, Harpo, and Chico, of course.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A Promising But Uneven Beginning
Review: Marx Brothers fans will find much inspired lunacy to enjoy, including the famous "Why A Duck?" sequence, Groucho's hilarious wooing of the indomitable Margaret Dumont, and a "fixed" auction that goes ridiculously awry. Still, the film has more historical interest than actual entertainment value, being more indicative of the first wave of "all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing" films to emerge from Hollywood than of the Marx Brothers' work as a whole. THE COCOANUTS also suffers from the fact that the brothers' work is generally subordinated to a plotline concerning a disreputable pair's efforts to alter the course of true love via a jewel robbery--a story so leaden that even the usually sparkling Kay Francis can do little with it. A must for any Marx Brothers collector, but more casual fans should select another title more accessible to modern tastes.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: well it's my favorite
Review: No kidding. I like the late-20s feel it has, the dancing, the slicked back hair... and the Marx Brothers, to me, are at their funniest, especially physically. I've watched it so many times I've lost count. I've memorized big chunks of the dialogue. Sure it's stagey, with its non-moving camera, but it also gives it the flavor of what it must have been like to see them on stage at that time.
"Horse Feathers" is a near second, though.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: well it's my favorite
Review: No kidding. I like the late-20s feel it has, the dancing, the slicked back hair... and the Marx Brothers, to me, are at their funniest, especially physically. I've watched it so many times I've lost count. I've memorized big chunks of the dialogue. Sure it's stagey, with its non-moving camera, but it also gives it the flavor of what it must have been like to see them on stage at that time.
"Horse Feathers" is a near second, though.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Let's film a Musical! Via Musical?
Review: Paramount literally plucked the Brothers off the Broadway stage to film one of the first sound musical films. The Brothers were performing in Animal Crackers on Broadway at night and rushing to the Astoria Studios to film Cocoanuts during the day. When everyone makes claims that the picture is disjointed and clumsy in appearance, keep in mind that the Brothers were giving a full Broadway performance the night before. They were also re-creating antics for a movie based directly on a stage show they had taken on a huge run a year or so earlier. So, in effect they were performing two Broadway scaled shows. But movies are a slow process and this snail pace must have been excrutiating on the timing based Marxes. The Marxes, used to biding time on trains while on the Vaudeville circuit, tried to recapture their mix of good hearted and mean spirited fun during the long delays ( ie..the cameraman filmed from inside a tall box to muffle the sound of the loud camera, Busby Berkeley-type musical numbers, and no audience to gauge response-though performing Cocoanuts as they had for so long on stage, they must have had a feel for time for most anticipated laughs, but could the timing be edited correctly?) The editing is not very good, but can it be blamed on the original film, or what television has trimmed down over the years? Things to note next time you watch Cocoanuts: In The Why a Duck routine Groucho almost slips and calls Chico 'Ravelli', his character name in Animal Crackers (which they were performing at night). Harpo plays a clarinet! Groucho ~"Do you want A Swede on the third floor? Chico ~ "I'd rather have a Polock in the basement" PC there, huh? George Foley was cameraman (any John Landis fan can explain that connection) And look at Margaret Dumont's expression when Groucho tries to explain the preference of an 8 inch water pipe. If you think this humor is dated, you aren't watching close enough! With the exception of Henderson losing his shirt...George S. Kaufman's script is still a wonderful Broadway history lesson forever caught on film!

Woman: Did anyone ever tell you, you look like the Prince of Wales? Chico: Better! (Timely there, huh?

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Marx Classic- Poor Transfer
Review: The Cocoanauts is a wonderfully funny movie. The classic sketches (ie. The Viaduct) are as funny now as they were then. While parts are dated and may seem corny this only adds to the movies charm. This was almost 70 years ago when talkies were new and vaudville show and dance reigned. I removed two stars because of the shabby transfer to DVD. Much more could have been done in terms of sound and video quality. While some ultra- purists may disagree, I feel that we have a responsibilty to save these movies not show the shabby way Hollywood studios have treated them. I am not arguing for a Turneresque colorization or Dolby remaster. I would have appreciated a cleaner more inteligiable copy. Otherwise this is a 5 all the way!!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Entertaining and Historically Significant
Review: THE COCOANUTS is historically significant as one of the first all-talking, all-singing musical films. It's also significant for unleashing the Marx Brothers onto the movie going public. THE COCOANUTS gave filmgoers a taste of what had Broadway audiences rolling in the aisle and while the film suffers from the static production typical of early musicals, it remains very entertaining thanks to the brothers' anarchic comedy. Director Robert Florey did use some innovative camera shots to help overcome the staginess (i.e. part of Chico's piano solo is shot head-on through the raised piano lid; a novel touch at the time). For many years, THE COCOANUTS was only available in generally awful prints with muddy soundtracks; recently portions of the film in mint condition have come to light, so while it's not a complete restoration, the film looks and sounds better than it has in years. For all it's faults, including an oddly forgettable Irving Berlin score, THE COCOANUTS still provides plenty of laughs.


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