Review of A Night in Casablanca (1946) by Kenneth L — 06 Aug 2012

This late Marx Brothers movie isn't nearly as funny as Duck Soup. Then again, I suppose nothing is.

The plot is irrelevant, because it's a Marx Brothers movie. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop the movie from wasting too much time on exposition for a story we don't really care about.

It's always great to see Groucho Marx do his thing, but he feels unusually hemmed in and suffocated in this movie. It never really lets him just go to town on somebody with priceless one-liners, as in the opening scenes of Duck Soup. Harpo and Chico are about the same as they usually are, but there aren't any sequences here to match the mirror sequence or the peanut stand. Also, the movie suffers from a very noticeable lack of Margaret Dumont. She was such a great target for Groucho's merciless wit.

The title suggests that the movie is a parody of the classic Casablanca, which came out a few years earlier, but it's not really. Aside from being set in the same time and place, this movie has nothing in common with that one; the characters and storyline aren't really poking fun at Casablanca. This is an okay movie to check out if you're already a fan of the brothers, but if not, it's really not the place to start. You'd be much better off starting with Duck Soup, which remains my favorite comedy of all time.