{"id":847,"date":"2010-09-30T15:24:03","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T22:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=847"},"modified":"2010-09-30T21:15:29","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T04:15:29","slug":"duck-soup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=847","title":{"rendered":"Duck Soup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Could this<\/a> just be my review, please? Seriously, I don’t think I have anything else to add.<\/p>\n

Duck Soup <\/em>is 68 minutes of pure old-fashioned hilarity. There’s plenty of innuendo, but nothing overtly profane or obscene. Aside from a couple of easily missed racial jabs, there’s nothing dated. By and large, this is a movie crammed from start to finish with physical comedy and witty conversations, all done with point-perfect comic timing.<\/p>\n

If I’m understanding the story correctly, the film takes place in Freedonia, a country so bankrupt and down on its luck that they have to put Groucho Marx… sorry, “Rufus T. Firefly” in charge of it. Firefly proceeds to run the whole country even further down the tubes, culminating in a petty feud with a foreign ambassador that escalates into full-blown war between two countries. There’s also something about espionage and seducing the widow who’s bankrolling the whole country of Freedonia.<\/p>\n

What does the strange title have to do with any of this? Hell if I know. The whole story is secondary, if not tertiary. Everything in this movie is a distant second to the Marx Brothers and rightfully so.<\/p>\n

This movie is fine proof that the Marx Brothers are a wonderful group of clowns. Zeppo admittedly doesn’t get much to do, but the other three brothers are masters of slapstick and wordplay. Harpo is a genius of pantomime and physical comedy. Groucho is perhaps the all-time champion of put-down jokes and witty repartee. They’re amazing on their own, but watching them work against Chico or against each other is some other kind of side-splitting.<\/p>\n

The story was muddled and I thought the musical numbers were kind of annoying, but the fact remains that this is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. I greatly enjoyed watching scenes (like this one<\/a>, for instance) that so clearly inspired the Looney Tunes, the Animaniacs and other great comedies that I’ve loved since childhood.<\/p>\n

If you’re looking for a great story or revolutionary filmmaking, this isn’t for you. If you just want to laugh for an hour, I can’t recommend Duck Soup<\/em> strongly enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Great old-fashioned comedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvdbin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3uOb3-dF","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":851,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions\/851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}