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The Marx Brothers had a five or six film run of greatness. A zany run through holy cows like college, the opera, and high society in which the brothers unleashed all various forms of hell on the unsuspecting straight men. But after A Day at the Races the Brothers never truly recaptured the same amount of magic and manic comedy that they trademarked in. This can be directly pointed towards the influence of Irving Thalberg, who insisted that they needed a stronger story structure and to be more sympathetic characters.
This formula would be the template for the rest of the films that the brothers made together, mostly to help Chico out with his gambling debts. A Night in Casablanca is proof that you can’t really mess the formula up too terribly, but that doesn’t mean the results are all that memorable. If I even mentioned film titles like Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, Animal Crackers, and A Night at the Opera the amount of sight gags and classic moments will flood the imagination, and Casablanca could have used a greater sense of inspiration for some of its comedic bits. There’s some good ones, a climatic plane battle comes to mind, or the extended sequence where the brothers keep stealing clothes from the bad guy and throwing them out of his room.
And perhaps that’s the major problem with the film, there are good moments, but they’re never quite polished off enough to really become that next level of great. There’s way too much plot going on with this movie, and it’s rather unfortunate that the Marx Brothers play a supporting role despite being above the title. Call me crazy, but a Marx Brothers movie needs to star them and have as many scenes of the group of them together raising hell. It’s pretty entertaining, but the romantic lovers occupy too much of the running time and they’re wooden. Most egregious of all is the lack of Margaret Dumont, who was the perfect springboard for their particular brand of insanity. A Night in Casablanca has plenty of entertainment value to make it worthwhile, but it feels like it’s trying hard to keep its central absurdist heroes in check too often. And I’m against that.
