Word: slapsticker
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Road to Rio (Paramount). The Crosby-Hope-Lamour "Road" pictures, in the opinion of plenty of enthusiastic cinemaddicts, can lead anywhere and go on forever. Their comedy is more verbal than visual, but any kind of slapstick-one of cinema's lost arts-is rare these days. Because they fill some of the void, these loose-jointed spoof pictures at least guarantee a lot of good laughs...
Hitting a new high in mediocrity, the plot of "Road to Rio" lurches along pathetically from one tiny crescendo to the next, leaving in its wake the battered carcasses of every stock situation the film's makers could find on the Paramount lot. A picture with some fast, funny slapstick, or even a loud, nerve-numbing orchestra, could perhaps survive such a story treatment, but this one throws in the towel early in the evening...
...timid lawyer into signing a $15,000 check. In a matter of minutes Harpo accompanies the other two on the harmonica as they sing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" over the body of a possum-playing playwright. All this and love interest too is entrenched at Boston's citadel of slapstick, the Laffmovie...
Never ones to let a logical plot stand in their way, the Marx Brothers outdo themselves in this revived 1937 classic. The chase, the great delaying action, Groucho scooting around like a bowlegged buzzard, and all the traditional slapstick routines are crammed into a confusing but hilarious "Room Service." According to the screenplay, Groucho is a producer who has no backers, Chico an unidentified character who lives with Groucho and owns a large stuffed moose head, and Harpo an actor who plays a dead body in Groucho's epic. But as in all their films, the zany trio slip...
...Marx brothers are survivals of a vanishing era. They, together with buffoons Bobby Clark and Bert Lahr, and screenmen Laurel and Hardy, are the last of a unique school of slapstick comedians. Spawned in old-time vaudeville and burlesque, the brothers excel in the highly specialized arts of pantomime, pie throwing, and provocative leering at women, while our present generation of couriers relies chiefly on flip lines and artless mugging. Slapstick is passing out of existence, but not out of date. Until a new generation of wits rediscover the art, go down to the Laffmovie and rear at the last...