The Cocoanuts (sic) is a musical comedy... of sorts.




Plot: A guy (Groucho Marx) runs a failing hotel in Florida ("The Hotel de Cocoanut" [sic]) with his sidekick (Zeppo Marx). A young couple hangs around there -- and the girl's mother (Margaret Dumond) doesn't want the couple to be together because she thinks girls deciding for themselves who they should date is too "modern". There also is a crooked couple hanging about who are determined to steal Margaret Dumond's jewels. Then, two hobos show up (Chico and Harpo Marx) who want to steal everything in sight and cause general mischief but are basically good fellows. All of these stories come crashing together in a "plot" which is, for the most part, zany musical-comedy nonsense.

It's probably worth saying -- I really love The Marx Brothers, and their Paramount movies are my favorites. But The Cocoanuts doesn't really feel like one of those films for me; it was their first official* film, and "talkies" were extremely new at that point (in fact, movies were still kind of new at that point), so The Cocoanuts is... odd.

Things!"Odd" as in, "doesn't seem to flow the way movies are supposed to flow". "Odd" as in, "feels like a stage show that somebody just set up a camera and filmed" (because it essentially is). "Odd" as in... kind of feels like it takes place in another world.



I suppose you could say that it basically does take place in another world -- the prelapsarian world of the roaring twenties, before WWII and the Great Depression. The movie will be 90 years old next year, after all. But "another world" simply isn't even going far enough; The Cocoanuts feels like it takes place in another dimension. People move and speak strangely. People have odd expressions on their faces. They say bizarre things in odd, flat tones. The pacing is completely off; the musical numbers range from the sickly-sweet to the bizarrely non sequitur and weird; the attitudes are positively quaint; and the film (even this "remastered" edition) drifts in and out of focus, giving the picture, for a good part, a cloudy, dreamlike quality.

Did I mention that the main direction for the actors seemed to be "stand in a straight line and try not to move"?Not to mention that, for fans of the Marx Brothers, this film includes troublingly little Marx Brothers, focusing a great deal on the sub-plots of the supporting cast -- the star-crossed lovers, the rich old dowager, and the criminal couple who want to steal the gems. Not to mention placing extreme emphasis on the music as opposed to the comedy. Chico and Harpo themselves (i.e. half the team) don't show up until THIRTY MINUTES into this 93-minute film. Zeppo is barely present, and Groucho doesn't give his most staggeringly funny performance; his dialogue, although officially zany, seems both overly-rehearsed and under-prepared (probably due to the fact that he had been doing this show on stage for quite some time at the point they filmed this -- and I seem to recall that while this movie was being filmed, they were simultaneously performing a new show on stage, which can't have helped matters as far as "line remembering" goes). The shortcomings of the main cast might be forgivable if the supporting cast was great, but, ahem, let's just say these would be "local television commercial quality" performances (if such a thing had existed in those days).

At times the film is as action-packed as... this photo.When I was a child, I watched this movie and went, "It's not like the other Marx Brothers movies I've seen," and essentially dismissed it from my world until ... Well, I have to admit it, until this year when I got the set of newly remastered Paramount BluRays and decided I'd better watch it, just to make sure it worked, and to see what "remastered" meant with regards to this famously poor-quality film.

To my surprise... I rather enjoyed it, in an odd kind of way.



The film still has a lot of issues (the in-and-out-of-focus issue being just one of many that even computer magic couldn't fix). But in the end, the film's poor technical quality (and odd balance, and odd performances, and odd music, and odd EVERYTHING) just adds to the extremely ethereal feeling of watching it. That "feeling like you're watching something in another dimension" feeling is unexpectedly appealing. The musical numbers (Irving Berlin!) are pleasing and innocent. There are moments of touching sweetness.


And, of course, during the rare moments that the Marx Brothers are on camera, they are fun to watch -- and, for the Marx fan, definitely worth checking out, although they don't constitute the bulk of the film.

How quaint is this movie? The cast waves goodbye to us at the end. Ultimately...
This film is worth checking out -- not only because it's now reached "historical" status, but because it's pleasant to watch. Don't expect it to feel as mad-cap (and quick-paced) as one of their later movies, like Horse Feathers -- in fact, I would encourage you to go into it in a somewhat meditative frame of mind, and mentally prepared for long stretches of weird quietness with no present Marx brothers.  SPECIAL NOTE: I would strongly discourage people who haven't seen any Marx brothers movies from considering this as if it was a representative sample of the Marx Brother films. If you want to know what Marx Brothers movies are generally like, check out Monkey Business. The Cocoanuts is its own thing -- deserving of a place on the shelf -- but, like the archaic spelling of its title, something of a unique experience in this day and age, and worth having a look at.

RECOMMENDED(Somewhat Acquired Taste)
* As it turns out, the Marx Brothers did, in fact, make a movie prior to The Cocoanuts: the silent, and now-lost-to-time, Humor Risk (which, if the play on the word humoresque is any indication of the comedy therein... maybe it's okay that it vanished off the face of the earth about a hundred years ago.)