#85 A Night at the Opera (1935)

Okay, so...remember how on MASH, Hawkeye would sometimes wear a funny pair of glasses and mustache and then run around making even more really bad puns than he normally did?  Well, turns out, he didn't invent that character.  It was based on someone called "Groucho Marx", who worked with other guys referred to as his "brothers" and did movies they called "comedies".  Never seen one until today.

Plot summary (with spoilers): Groucho Marx (playing a character whose name absolutely doesn't matter) is sitting in a restaurant having dinner with a comely young blond lady.  At the table behind him is an older woman, who complains that her date (Groucho) never showed up.  They finally see each other, and she harrumphs that he's late for dinner and he says something like "nonsense, I already had dinner!" and here we go.  He then sits at the table with the lady (named Mrs. Claypool).  Turns out Groucho is some kind of...agent, maybe?  Or PR guy, who is supposed to help Mrs. Claypool become famous or at least accepted in polite society.  Or something.  They talk for a while, and Groucho basically calls her fat and old a bunch of times and she just glowers.  And he's always crossing his eyes; you know, for the comedy of it.  Jerry Lewis swears by this. Wait, is his mustache drawn on his face?  Weird.
Another well-to-do man (Herman) shows up and attempts to woo Mrs. Claypool away from Groucho.  He's also a life coach, or whatever  Groucho is.  Groucho says, "Ah, no you don't, I saw her first. Well actually, her mother saw her first, but let's not bring the Civil War into this".  BA DA CHING!  Thanks, ladies and germs! Tip your waitress!  And then they make plans to go to the opera that night, all three of them.
At the opera, we're backstage.  A weirdo is trying on layers of clothes, including a dress.  A man walks into his dressing room, sees the weirdo and starts whipping him with a whip.  No, I did not accidentally put on a gay porn.  The man is famous opera singer Lasspari, and the weirdo is another Marx brother, called Harpo.  I guess his shtick is he doesn't talk.  He totally looks like Teller, too.  Anyway, Harpo is Lasspari's dresser, but Lasspari keeps whipping him, and finally fires him for trying on the clothes.
Later, during the actual Opera, we see Lasspari singing to the female lead, Rosa, while Groucho, Herman, and Mrs. Claypool watch from the box seats.  Now, you may ask yourself; are there hijinks?  You betcha!
At the end of the opera, Herman says he wants to procure Lasspari and manage him, using Mrs. Claypool's money.  Or connections.  Or something.  The upshot is, the two of them are somehow going to manage Herman.  Look, none of this matters, the wiki plot summary is sparse, and I'm not watching this movie twice!  Who are you to judge?! Groucho decides he wants to manage Lasspari instead, after he hears Lasspari can make $1,000 a performance.
So after the show, he goes backstage to approach Lasspari and sign him with Herman's company.  But first, we meet Ricardo, and the last brother, Chico.  Chico is Ricardo's manager, and Ricardo is a newbie singer.  Ricardo loves Rosa, and flirts with her blah blah.  They go off together, leaving Chico alone.  Harpo and Lesspari come running in, Lasspari's still got the whip (yeah, I don't...) and he's telling Harpo he's still double-dog fired or whatever.  Harpo knocks Lasspari out with a mallet, then exits.  Groucho shows up, sees Chico looking at Lasspari, and thinks Chico is his manager.  He tells Chico he wants to sign up his client with Herman and he'll make...ten dollars a night.  Chico thinks this is great.  They figure Chico will need a cut of 3 dollars, and the IRS five, and then Groucho needs his cut of course.  Punchline: If he doesn't do too many performances, he should break even.  Groucho then unfurls two long contracts.  He gives Chico a copy.  They start talking about "the party of the first part will hereby be referred to as the party of the first part".  "What part says that?"  "The second part".
I begin to get very tired.
They continually rip out the parts of the contract they disagree with; the scene is clearly improvised, BADLY, and then at the end they're left with tiny slips of paper that Chico agrees to sign, but he doesn't have a pen and Groucho says he'll take his word for it.  Then Chico wants to know what the fine print is and Groucho says it's the "sanity clause" and Chico says, say with me now, "THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS SANITY CLAUSE".
Then Lasspari finally wakes up and Groucho thinks to say, "what happened to your client?" and Chico explains that his client is Ricardo...and scene.

Waldorf: Wake up, you old fool.  You slept through the show.
Stadler: Who's a fool?  You watched it. BWA HA HA HA!

Oh sorry, I must've dozed off.  I think I dreamed that the old men from the Muppets here heckling this movie.
So then, Lasspari is hired by Herman to sail on a boat and go to New York and be a famous opera singer.  He gets Herman to also hire Rosa.  He tells Rosa the news as she is talking to Ricardo.  Rosa doesn't want to go, but Ricardo encourages her to follow her dreams.  She agrees to go with Lasspari, and soon the two of them, plus Groucho, Herman, and Mrs. Claypool are on the boat.  The crowd below to see them off include Chico, Harpo, and Ricardo.  Everyone asks Rosa and Lesspari to sing as they drift away.  Lasspari refuses, as he's not being paid.  Rosa says she will.  She sings from the boat, while Ricardo sings from the dock.  Harpo mugs and runs around and does a bunch of shit that Jim Carrey would characterize as "trying too hard".  Finally, the scene is over.
We see Groucho with a giant suitcase being pushed on a dolly by a steward.  He first goes to Mrs. Claypool's room, and insists that she meet him for dinner at his room in ten minutes.  She refuses at first, until he says he won't leave unless she agrees.  She finally does, and he says, "if you're not there in ten minutes, I'll be back here in eleven.  With squeaky shoes!"  (???????)
He goes to his room, which is extremely small.  He can barely fit in his giant suitcase next to the bed.  He opens the suitcase, and it turns out, Ricardo, Chico, and Harpo have stowed away.  Harpo is sleeping.  They put him on the bed, then Ricardo and Chico beg for food.  Groucho says he'll get them food, but they have to eat and leave quickly, because he has a date in ten minutes.  Then, he tells them to be quiet, because if they're caught stowing away, they'll be arrested.  He exits the room, and a waiter is right outside. He orders food.  "Three steaks. Medium done, well done, and over-done.  And pineapple juice, orange juice, and tomato juice."
From the room, Chico calls, "And two hardboiled eggs".
Groucho says, "and two hardboiled eggs."
Harpo honks his horn.
Groucho says, "make that three hardboiled eggs".
And then he goes on to order about half a dozen different unfunny things, and after each one, Chico calls "and two hardboiled eggs" and Groucho repeats it and then Harpo honks his horn and Groucho says "make that three hardboiled eggs".  I mean, that's the fucking joke.  The actual fucking joke is "make that three hardboiled eggs".  Oh, and then on the last one?!  Harpo honks his horn a whole bunch of times, like for about twenty seconds, while Groucho rolls his eyes and then finally it stops and then Groucho says, "Make that twelve hardboiled eggs."
THAT'S THE JOKE.  THEY CHANGED THE NUMBER FROM THREE TO TWELVE AND THAT'S THE JOKE.  SOMEBODY WROTE THAT DOWN AND SAID "HERE, TELL THIS JOKE". 
Anyway.  They place the order.  Then two maids show up to clean the room.  They can barely fit.  Then a plumber comes to fix something in the room.  Then a manicurist.  Then a plumbers assistant, who is morbidly obese.  Then a woman offering a manicure.  Then a woman looking for her Aunt Lily.  (Okay, that made me chuckle).  Then, like three other people.  They're all stuffed in the room, and it's kinda funny, I guess, or more accurately, would be funny, if I hadn't already turned against this thing.  Finally, four waiters show up with all the food they ordered, but we don't see them actually fit inside the room.
Cut to outside the room, Mrs. Claypool approaches.  She opens the door, and twenty people spill out.  Cute, I guess.  I'll give the movie that.  It's the only scene that works, even a little bit.
Later, Groucho is having dinner with Mrs. Claypool while the other three hide out in the room.  They decide to sneak out and try to get more food.  At the dinner, Mrs. Claypool and Herman point out three men with long beards, who are the guest of honor on the boat, and are supposed to make a speech or something when they get to New York.  They're famous aviators.  (Groucho's actual joke is, "if they're aviators, what are they doing on a boat?").

Waldorf: Did you get us tickets?
Stadler: Yeah, they're for out of town!  BWA HA HA HA HA!

Sorry, dozed off again.  Anyway, moving along.  The other three sneak into the dining hall and hilariously eat big piles of food.  You would not believe the comic antics Harpo gets up to with a bowl of spaghetti!  Then, Rosa shows up, and Ricardo reveals himself to her, and they sing.  This takes forever, but at least when there's singing, there's no "jokes". The captain or security guy or whatever sees them singing and goes after them.  With Groucho's help, they escape, and then happen across the room where the aviator's are staying.  They three of them are all asleep in one bed.  Harpo magically pulls some scissors out of his pocket and...we fade out.
...fade back in, and we're in New York.  Harpo, Chico, and Ricardo are dressed like the aviators and have the beards glued to their faces.  What happened to the actual aviators?  One can only assume they were brutally murdered and stuffed into Groucho's suitcase.  At least that would be an interesting plot development.
Okay, moving quickly now.  The fake aviators are supposed give a big speech about flying, but they can't so they stall and it's "wacky", and finally they run off with Groucho.  Later, we see them living with Groucho at his apartment in New York.  A police officer comes and says he hears Groucho is harboring three fugitives (boy, they really take stowing away seriously).  Groucho's apartment as two rooms.  The cop sees the bedroom has four beds, but then Groucho distracts him while the other three take the beds away one by one and I'm not even going to get into it.  It just goes on and on with everyone running back and forth between the two rooms and even Benny Hill's like, "enough!"
 Moving on!  Mrs. Claypool sees Groucho hanging around with the other three and fires him.
They all plan their revenge.  At the opera that night, Harpo and Chico kidnap Lasspari, while Groucho distracts Mrs. Claypool and Herman, and Ricardo replaces Lesspari and sings a duet with Rosa.  The crowd loves it.  Finally, Herman and Mrs. Claypool rescue Lasspari, who had been tied up.  They order the arrest of all four of them, but when Lesspari tries to go out and sing the final number with Rosa, the crowd boos him.  Herman begs Ricardo to go out there instead.  He says he will, but only if they let everyone go.  Herman agress, and Ricardo and Rosa sing.  Oh, and Harpo's wearing a dress again, and he rips Herman's coat for no reason.

Stadler: They aren't half bad.
Waldorf: Nope.  They're all bad.  BWA HA HA HA HA HA!

Review: I really don't know what to say.  I can't understand a world where this is considered funny.

Stars: One half out of five, because the "crowded state room" scene was pretty clever.

NO.


Next, "Easy Rider" and then my heart will go on with "Titanic".  Hmm...a cast swap would be interesting.