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The fruit of evolution is a banana with a zipper peel, thus Huxley U. vs. Darwin U. "My boy, I think you've got something there, and I'll wait outside until you clean it up." Groucho Marx as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, presiding over Academia with the contrarian's hymn, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It." Baravelli the iceman (Chico) and dog-catching Pinky (Harpo), out of the speakeasy and into the classroom. "Have you got two empty dunce chairs? I brought you two empty dunces." The campus scion (Zeppo) meanwhile can't focus on his studies, not with the "college widow" (Thelma Todd) waiting in her negligee. Petting in the drawing room, a crowded place, "a hot dog stand would clean up here." (The situation is not cooled by ice blocks, which are repeatedly brought in only to be tossed out the window.) A distillate of Marxian disorder, very pure and sustained by Norman Z. McLeod from beginning to end. The anatomy lecture ("Have they started sawing a woman in half yet?"), a single peppermint Life Saver for the splashing vamp in Dreiser's canoe. "Everyone Says I Love You," four variations of a serenade: "The great, big mosquito when he stings you / The fly when he gets stuck on the flypaper, too / Says I love you." (Right before Chico's piano number, Groucho stares at the camera and helpfully advises the audience to head out to the lobby.) Garbage cans into Roman chariots, pigskin on a string at the stadium. "Oh, Professor, you're full of whimsy." "Can you notice it from there? I'm always that way after I eat radishes." The gridiron climax departs from Newmeyer and Taylor's The Freshman and heads toward Altman's MASH. With David Landau, Robert Greig, Nat Pendleton, and James Pierce. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |