CLEVER COMEDIANS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 643, 22 December 1932, Page 3

CLEVER COMEDIANS.

Marx Brothers Appearing at Plaza. “Mayfair Nights,” starring Isobel Elsom, will finish at the Plaza Theatre on Friday night. Super hilarious mirth will be provided by the four Marx brothers in “ Horse Feathers,” which will be shown at a midnight matinee at the Plaza Theatre to-morrow night. The film is notable for its sheer foolishness, without any rhyme or reason unless it he to demonstrate that their laugh creating abilities are unlimited. The opening is like the start of an old-time musical comedy, when Groucho arrives to become president of Huxley College. The action is fast and furiously funny, climaxed by the entire student body joining in the chorus of his inaugural song with the dignified, bewhiskered faculty becoming the dance ensemble. Harpo announces that he has ascertained that in the past education has been allowed to interfere with football, and his policy will be to correct the errors of his predecessors. Harpo is the city dogman, and Chico is a bootlegger, and Wagstaff hires both as members of the Huxley football team. The action jumps to a speakeasy episode and more nonsensical fun, and then to the apartment of the college widow with the four brothers travelling at a dizzy pace. Following this there is a kidnapping sequence, when the two roughnecks that Harpo and Chico are supposed to shanghai turn the tables on them. Then comes the great football game between Huxley and Darwin that is one continuous howl. The Marx brothers are a remarkable combination of mixed talent, with whom nothing on the stage or screen can be compared. Their humour is of the slapstick character, but by some extraordinary means they invest all with their own personalities, and give what would he crude and futile in other hands a touch of genuine humour. Their patter is so swift and continuous that before the implication of one jest sinks in another is on top of it, and as a consequence the laughter among the audience kills much of the dialogue.