The Big Store (1941)
(On Cable TV, November 2020) Nearly every Marx Brothers film is worth a few laughs, but there are still clearly superior Marx films and then the others. While The Big Store is not one of their worst, it doesn’t rank as a particularly good one. Made during their MGM years, it features three of the brothers wreaking havoc in and on a department store, as Groucho plays a detective asked to uncover a plot against the owners. Everyone plays their part, including Margaret Dumont as the rich older lady pursued by a gold-digging Groucho. As usual for Marx films of the period, the plot serves as a way to hang the sketches, and to provide a break from the comedy with easily skippable musical numbers that borrow a lot from operettas and feature the featureless Tony Martin and Virginia Grey. (Virginia O’Brien, as usual, is more distinctive with a monotone take on a lullaby.) Harpo plays the harp, Chico does his wiseguy and Groucho plays with words. For fans, the two standout sequences of the film are a demonstration of increasingly wilder beds popping out of the walls, and a final chase through the entire store that finely upholds the Marx Brothers’s tradition of visually anarchic movie climaxes. As with all of their movies, it’s worth a look and possibly a box-set purchase. But it’s not one of their best, and the MGM structure clearly differentiates between the fun scenes and the dull ones in between.
