Starring The Marx Brothers
Produced by Paramount Pictures
At a struggling resort hotel in Florida, a con man and his girl plot to steal some jewels from Mrs. Potter, a wealthy matron staying at the establishment.
Mrs Potter's daughter Polly is in love with Bob, but Mrs. Potter wants her to marry the con man, believing him to be a socialite.
When the jewels go missing, Bob is blamed. How can he prove his innocence and get the girl? And what are the Marx Brothers doing here? And what about these dancers that keep showing up?
The Cocoanuts is the first ever Marx Brothers film, so it has an automatic place in film history. The film is an adaptation of the brothers' stage show...
It's also a mess, a mess that almost works.
As an exercise in meta filmmaking, The Cocoanuts is remarkable. Here, you have a film that is ostensibly about this love triangle and heist, with the Marx Bros. as background characters. However, over the course of the film, the comedians start taking over. Their scenes become longer and, by the end, we forget the "main" characters even existed.
Watching the Marx Brothers invade this more traditional film is a joy. There are problems however. In addition to the comedians, we have a group of dancers constantly elbowing their way into the movie. The film at points literally screeches to a halt to accommodate a musical number.
I do not have any issue with musicals. The dancing here is actually pretty well done (especially compared to something like The Broadway Melody). However, The Cocoanuts makes no effort to connect the dancing to anything happening in the story. None of the dancers are characters and you could cut them entirely with no impact on the plot.
My other big problem here is frankly the Marx Brothers. I just didn't find them to be very funny. I can sit there and objectively assess that turning "stucco" into "stuck-oh" or "viaduct" into why a duck" is clever. I get that Harpo eating a telephone is absurd. It just doesn't tickle my funny bone at all.
So while I love the conceit of a movie that is so utterly hijacked by the Marx Brothers that it only begrudgingly resolves its plot, the fact that the comedians' humor doesn't work for me here means I'm not left with much. Add in the unnecessary musical numbers and I can only say I was disappointed.
** out of *****
NOTE: Apparently, I am not the only one who had an issue with the film. The Marx Brothers reportedly were horrified when they saw the final cut and tried to convince the producers to sell them the film so they could bury it. Their offer was refused and The Cocoanuts went on to be a big hit.
Photo from A Mythical Monkey writes about the Movies
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