The Big Store (1941)

Tommy Rogers (Tony Martin), an aspiring singer who owns shares in a department store, wants to sell so he can fund a music conservancy in the neighborhood where he got his start. But the bad guy doesn’t want him to sell for some reason and hatches a plan to kill him for some reason, but the Margaret Dumont character (Margaret Dumont) hires a detective (Groucho) for some reason.

Is Tommy a big star or trying to get his start? Are his shares valuable or almost worthless? Doesn’t matter because we get the deal. The Brothers clown around ostensibly trying to protect the cartoon good guy from the cartoon bad guys, roll credits. The plot isn’t secondary, it’s irrelevant. Truth be told the bits aren’t that bad, but the trouble begins with the inclusion of pointless musical numbers.

Chico does the same piano number as always and Harpo his harp number as always, just in case we haven’t seen it a dozen times already. To make matters worse, the story (such as it is) halts in the second act for a ridiculous swing number that went on forever. But it gets worse. There is a big finale that Groucho called “The most godawful thing I’d ever heard”. I tend to agree.

There is a big chase scene near the end that is a bit unusual for a Marx Brother's film. It was silly without being particularly funny, and I found it odd to see the boys, now in their 50s, behaving like 20-somethings.

Here is the eleventh of the twelve Marx Brother films, and it only took me a little over ten years to see them. The final is the somewhat hard to find Love Happy (1949) which was disowned by Groucho. So, yay. It has the lowest IMDb score of the lot and hopefully I can finish off the set this year.

I began the night with the intent of watching a Buster Keaton talkie but quickly aborted that plan. As disappointing as The Big Store was, there are worse films. To see Keaton, who should have been at the top of his game, in such a terrible production was heartbreaking. I saw maybe fifteen minutes before declaring it unwatchable trash. The Big Store, as uninspired as it was, was still watchable. Well, most of it was. AMRU 2.5.