Nonureva
Really Surprised!
StyleSk8r
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
grantss
Good fun. Not as good as their best, but better than most of their later stuff (eg At The Circus, The Big Store).
SnoopyStyle
S. Quentin Quale (Groucho Marx) is a con-man heading west. He encounters seemingly bumbling brothers Joseph (Chico Marx) and Rusty Panello (Harpo Marx) in a train station and ends up losing his money to them. The brothers meet old miner Dan Wilson who hasn't found gold for 40 years on his property, Dead Man's Gulch. They lend him $10 and get the property as collateral. Meanwhile, Terry Turner arranges the sale of the property to the railroad for $50k. The Turners and Wilsons are rivals. Terry hopes to ease the rivalry with the sale and marry Dan's granddaughter Eve Wilson. Saloon owner Red Baxter receives a telegram to get the property. The boys write an IOU on the back of the deed to pay for beer at Red's saloon.This is full of the Marx brothers antics. Chico plays the piano. Groucho is the heel. Harpo doesn't talk and finds an usual harp with the Indians. This comes after a string of iconic Marx brothers comedy hits. These things come in cycles and the guys may be wearing out their welcome. They haven't changed their verbal gags and there are still songs. The last act is all action on a train and that's plenty of fun. For Marx fans, this should still hit the spot.
Into_The_West
The most significant thing about Go West is that Buster Keaton was an uncredited writer on this film. He also was on A Night at the Opera but the Keaton touch is more difficult to discern there.The Marx Bros. have a reputation as verbal comics (Harpo excluded, of course), but one must note many of their best scenes are visual. The mirror sequence in Duck Soup is the prime example. Others include the unpacking scene in A Night in Casablanca, the "massacre" that ends Animal Crackers, large parts of the football game (and the final marriage scene) in Horse Feathers. Even something as minor as Groucho flicking ashes into a call pipe to the engineers of the ship in Monkey Business shows just how important the visual can be, even for Groucho.Keaton, of course, was virtually 100% visual. Occasionally there are subtle jokes in the subtitles of his films (His "Can you describe it?" to a woman looking for a lost dollar bill in Sherlock Jr. is an example), but that's about it.What this means is that a Marx Brothers film partly written by Buster Keaton is not a combination of irreconcilable ideas. Keaton's contributions here do not become crystal clear until the last 15 minutes of the film, the climactic train chase.There are lots of similarities between gags from Our Hospitality (the train leaving the track yet still running), Steamboat Bill Jr (Harpo escapes being run over as the train with a house stuck on the front comes at him by opening a front door, then opening a back door, calling to mind the falling building facade Buster faced in the earlier film) and, of course, the General (chopping up the train for firewood), but the thing that's most noteworthy about The General is just how long Keaton can sustain a chase (it virtually runs the entire film), and the Go West sequence is marvelously sustained comedy.The Big Store also has the Brothers doing physical shtick, but the absence of the surreal makes them look like nothing more than slightly more sophisticated three stooges. They are not three stooges here. Harpo uses the wheel of the train to sharpen an ax, kerosene instead of water is used to douse an engine's fire resulting in it taking off at hyper speed, Groucho is buried beneath an avalanche of popcorn put in the train's fire as fuel. Something like watching the train go off the track and then go into a circle as merry-go-round music plays just seems like pure Keaton and pure Marx.Although not Duck Soup (what is, other than Duck Soup?) the film to me is the best thing they did between A Night at the Opera and A Night in Casablanca. Groucho's character is more along the lines of his Paramount persona than his avuncular Day at the Races one. He finally seems totally unfettered again. Harpo, too, is unfettered (although maybe it would be better to say unleashed). He's given a large number of bits where he's not depending on Chico or anyone else to bring off the gag. And Chico seems almost as delightfully corrupt as he is in the Cocoanuts.The film is slowed by a few too many musical numbers, too much of a sappy romantic subplot about families in feuds. and the scenes among stereotypical Native Americans are diminished by a few too many "ugh"'s and references to "the red man." Yet the pacing is fast enough, and delivery and lines sharp enough, to keep all the balls up in the air to the end. This is the first film since Duck Soup to unequivocally seem like the Marxes as they would play it in a Paramount film (A Night in Casablanca would be the last).And this is all lead-up to the final train sequence which, as any climax must be, is the best one of the film.More than the scene in Limelight where Keaton and Chaplin do a comedy routine (an opportunity Chaplin seems to have tossed with mediocre gags), Keaton's working with the Marx Brothers is a remarkable moment in film history, and one that worked well enough to redeem alater comedy of the Marx Brothers.
MartinHafer
The sad fact about the Marx Brothers is that after the movie A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, their career was all downhill. While A DAY AT THE RACES and ROOM SERVICE were still very good, their subsequent efforts were painfully ordinary and generally unfunny compared to their early zany work. It was like they were playing lethargic caricatures of themselves. And, from what I gathered, the Marxes WERE very content to just collect a paycheck at this point in their lives. This film is a little better than THE BIG STORE and AT THE CIRCUS--two surprisingly bland efforts from the same time period by the comedy team.Some of the blame for the static nature of this film also must be given to MGM--a studio that had a history of ruining good comedians when they came under DIRECT MGM control (Laurel and Hardy's films were distributed by MGM but were created by the independent-minded Hal Roach Studios). If you don't believe me, look at all the Marxes films from the late 30s on as well as Buster Keaton's films of the 30s--they rely on an MGM formula and lack all the frenetic intensity of the comedians' earlier non-MGM efforts. The film is a by-the-book effort where the Marx Brothers travel west in search of fun and adventure. Soon, the three get pulled into a land deal and they get cheated by the saloon owner, Baxter (Robert Barrat). So, much of the rest of the film is spent trying to get back the deed for this property. In addition, there is a needless romance John Carroll and Diana Lewis. Useless because folks who go to see Marx Brothers films really don't want romance--unless it involves Groucho or Harpo chasing women. Overall, not an unpleasant film but as for the comedy, it was amazingly muted. Among the best moments were when Groucho and his brothers kept trying to cheat each other as well as the climactic train ride. And, among the worst was the American Indian portion--which was long, unfunny and irrelevant to the film. By the way, what happened to grandpa (Tully Marshall)? He just disappeared from the film and at one point someone asked where he was...but this character who was important to the plot just vanished.
