The Big Store

In its own way, a rather bizarre picture, with a truly peculiar amalgam of elements, everything from production numbers to Italian families to a singer with the weirdest style I’ve ever seen. All Marx Brothers pictures do this to some extent, but usually without such vehemence and self-consciousness. In the other pictures, it usually flows naturally from the madcap energy. Here it seems sort of forced, as if a deliberate effort were being made to appeal to a wide audience by putting in something for everybody. Some works, some most certainly doesn’t. The consolation, of course, is the inimitable Marx Brothers; some scenes are very, very funny. No “Duck Soup” this (what is?) but then, as the New York Times has said, “Middling Marx better than none.”