(1940)
2.5
Craig Butler
"Go west" may have been good advice for all those young men Horace Greeley was counseling, but the Marx Brothers should perhaps have thought twice about it. Not that Go West is a bad film, as some of its sequences are quite good, but it's not a film that was really worth the talents of the boys. One of the problems is that the Marxes work best in a totally artificial studio environment; when they're shot on an actual city street, there's something a little odd about them, and when they're shot in an actual Western exterior, it's incredibly distracting. Of greater importance, the creators of the film didn't really find a way of letting the boys subvert their setting. In spite of all their efforts and their total involvement in the plot of the film, they don't really seem to be taking the characteristics of Western films and exposing the silliness underneath those characteristics. Fortunately, the film does provide a number of routines -- the initial meeting between Groucho, Harpo, and Chico; the stagecoach sequence; some of the safecracking bit; and most of the climactic train race -- that give the trio a chance to show off their comic chops. Margaret Dumont is unfortunately missing from Go West, but June MacCloy's deep-voiced chorus girl is a great deal of fun, and helps make up for the bland performances of John Carroll and Diana Lewis, and the so-so villainy of Robert H. Barrat and Walter Woolf King.
Go West on AllMovie
Go West (1940)
