The best Marx Brothers film to date – mainly because it puts them in a setting where they can wreck complete and utter havoc, to wit a college. (It’s a greater environment for their talents than a ship or a country estate). The plot is simple, effective and gloriously cynical in its acceptance of illegality and corruption (already hinted at in the matter-of-fact depiction of gangsters in Monkey Business – Grouch runs a college and hires two ring-in football players from a speak easy in order to help his team win the game.Thelma Todd is again fun as a vamp (a "college widow") and this gives Zeppo his funniest role yet – not much of a claim, I admit, and it’s not so much his lines but his role… he plays Groucho’s son. But that is very funny.
The other three are in excellent form and there is a hilarious finale, a football game - I think this is the first real extended routine the Marxes do in a film that it would have been near-impossible to recreate on stage. The only thing that is really missing is Margaret Dumont, who you would have thought would have been a natural for a college film.
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