Way too Late at the Movies: A Night at the Opera

The second of my thrift store finds, the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera."

This film is home to the much-celebrated "sanity clause," viz:

I don't want to be cranky and say this was pretty much like the first Marx Brothers movie I've seen, but it kinda was. Same kind of plot, same kind of gimmicks. There's a musical bit, a lot of sight gags. The underdogs keep being underdogs until the end and then they triumph over the stiff shirts, which is what people wanted to see in a Marx Brothers movie.

But it was fun. And an education. We like to say that Hollywood is really formulaic today, with a lot of retreads and reboots and such, but it appears like it's been that way all along, and if people like the retreads and reboots, I guess that works.

The shorts included on this DVD were forgettable. I watched them, but don't remember much about them.

One thing I'd either never noticed nor paid much attention to until now: Groucho's famous mustache is mostly grease paint. I mean, I guess I always just assumed it was real, but watching these films it's obvious it's not.