Great Film overall

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

My least favorite Marx Bros movie. And yes, I'm counting "The Story of Mankind." I didn't laugh once the whole time. This has none of the flavor of the better Marx Bros movies. No memorable dialogue or creative gags. It's a generic cookie cutter B-level comedy of the 1940's that just happens to star the Marx Bros. The only life in the film comes from Douglas Dumbrille and the lovely Virginia Grey. The Marxes, Groucho in particular, seem to just be parodying themselves. Collect that paycheck boys! The great Margaret Dumont, in her last Marx movie, goes through the motions but is clearly having no fun. Tony Martin's insipid songs make me long for Zeppo. Be prepared to fast-forward through all musical numbers as they are just dreadful. There are some very generous reviewers here on IMDb who seem to like this one. To each their own but in my opinion this one really is the pits.

The Big Store is a Marx brothers movie from 1941.The plot is irrelevant as it is in any other Marx movie.All that makes any difference is how funny these movies are and I can tell you about this one; IT IS.This time the brothers go crazy in a department store.Groucho plays Wolf J. Flywheel, the private eye, Harpo is Wacky, his silent partner and Chico is Ravelli, the bodyguard of the singer Tommy Rogers (Tony Martin).The amazing Margaret Dumont makes her last appearance with the Marx brothers playing Martha Phelps.It was most hilarious in all those movies to watch Groucho court Margaret and at the same time humiliate her the worst way.She didn't seem to mind.The Big Store is an underrated gem that shouldn't be thrown away.There are lots of scenes that raise this movie higher than many modern movies would deserve to be raised.It's incredible to watch the brothers roller skating in the store.There are also some musical numbers in the movie.It's great to watch and listen to Groucho singing "Sing While You Sell".There's the lady (Virginia O'Brien) singing "Rock-A-Bye Baby with a frozen face.I just loved her! Chico and Harpo playing piano together is just hilarious! Harpo playing his beloved harp with the mirror reflections is just magical! I'm just reading Harpo Marx' autobiography "Harpo Speaks!".It's fascinating to read how these brothers grew up in poverty under the wings of Minnie and Frenchie and became the comedy team everybody loves.These brothers worked great as a team.The viewer can sense that.That's probably why we still love them.It's timeless, their humor.You can live the 1940's or whatever decade or millennium, it always works.If somebody woke them up now and they'd be back in the moving pictures, the movie theaters would be packed with people.And the laughter would be heard miles away.

I finally brought myself to watch all of the Big Store, the movie on the flip side of Go West DVD. I recall seeing Store (in the late 60's/early 70's I deliberately saw any Marx movie whether on TV or in a revival in a theatre until I had seen them all) years before and being bored out of my skull.I had tried to watch it a few weeks earlier, but gave up after the scene where the beds can be hidden in the wall or floors.This time, biting the bullet, I watched Groucho sing while he sold and the final chase scene with sound effects added that made it seem like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.And the end, I had to admit, The Big Store was passable--provided it had starred someone else.If you can erase the fact you're watching the Marx Brothers from your mind, The Big Store seems exactly like any overblown 1940's comedy. It well meets the standard for a Red Skelton film or perhaps something with Danny Kaye or early Jerry Lewis.If you can perform the mental feat that Groucho is Red Skelton, Chico is Danny Kaye and Harpo is Jerry Lewis (uggghhh!), the Big Store does not seem like the abysmal thing it is.Seeing this film makes you understand just how high the bar the Marx Brothers set for their movies, much higher than virtually any other comic working with a film studio, instead of independently as Chaplin did.Things happened in a Marx Brother film that just never happened in one with Red Skelton: Margaret Dumont being deviled by Groucho, Groucho being deviled by Chico, and the rest of the Universe bedeviled by Harpo. Out of the gate in the Cocoanuts, the Brothers' first film in 1929, we already have the "Why A Duck?" routine between Groucho and Chico. We already have Groucho's "Won't you lie down?" to Margaret Dumont, and Harpo giving Basil Ruysdael his leg while whistling a tune from the arcane musical, "Floradora." Even as we move to the later films, there is also the Marx's brilliant sense of surrealism and absurdity, far beyond the capabilities of anyone else. Their penultimate film, A Night in Casablanca, an almost last hurrah which they financed themselves and had more say over, can be arguably ranked with the lesser Paramount or best MGM films.But Store provides a disconnect which the brothers never are able to overcome. This was never something impossible for them. The plot was generally something they made their way around, jumped over, or totally jettisoned. Here, there are trapped in it, and it's not pretty.There are still some marvelous moments--how can there not be in a Marx Brothers movie? Groucho's last film appearance with Margaret Dumont is as always wonderful. Harpo has a magnificent harp solo where he turns into Mozart and his mirror reflections spring to life far more than any ever did in Duck Soup. The opening sequence where Dumont visits Groucho's fly-by-night detective agency (where Harpo is the given the Quasi-Zeppoesque role as Groucho's Assistant) is wonderful.But the lengthy Groucho musical number (three DVD chapters!) is pretty much a straight one. There's no tattooed lady, African explorer, or pre-war hysteria to be found. The juvenile's musical number, The Tenement Symphony, is nowhere as mercifully brief as When My Dreams Come True is in the Cocoanuts. Harpo and Chico even participate in it.Worst of all, however, are the moments where the brothers are made into just any old comedy team, pushing wrong buttons to create chaos, riding on roller skates and unicycles to escape the villain, and serving up a wienie with some Puccini (Or is it Rossini? My mind has blocked it out like a car accident).You don't gotta sing while you sell. Please don't.It's sad that the Marx's valedictory with MGM had to be this generic bore. Through no fault of their own, they became personae non grata at the studio and seemed to be given a script pulled at random from a file drawer.So, if you're a Red Skelton fan, and can ignore the fact you're watching Groucho, Harpo and Chico, by all means, watch The Big Store. If you're a Marx Brothers worshipper (they don't merely have fans), please show their memories respect and keep the DVD on the side that has Go West.

While I disagree with the conventional wisdom about the Marx Brothers' film made before The Big Store, Go West (1940), believing it to be yet another one of their many masterpieces, I have to agree with the conventional wisdom about The Big Store. It has the feeling of a contractual obligation film. One, two or all three of the Marx Brothers are absent for long periods of time. The story is often confusing. The film doesn't flow very well. Some of the material featuring other performers simply doesn't work. Even when it does work, it's never as good as the Marx Brothers' material, and even their work is too often strangely flat.The Big Store is really the story of Tommy Rogers (played by famed pop singer Tony Martin). Rogers has just gained partial ownership of the Phelps Department store with the passing of a relative. However, he's not interested in the store, so he plans to sell and use the money to build a state of the art music conservatory in conjunction with his friend, Ravelli (Chico Marx). Unfortunately, not everything at the Phelps store has been on the up and up, and surviving store manager Mr. Grover (Douglass Dumbrille) is worried about buyers discovering their creative bookkeeping. So they try to off Tommy, which leads to hiring private detective Wolf J. Flywheel (Groucho Marx) and his assistant, Wacky (Harpo Marx), who happens to be Ravelli's brother. At the same time, Mr. Grover is courting Martha Phelps (Margaret Dumont), Tommy's aunt, with machinations of eventual ownership of the store.In terms of meatiness, that's far more of a plot than I usually relay, but all of that is presented in the first 10 - 15 minutes of the film. The remainder involves playing out those threads. The problem is that the above is way too complicated, especially for a Marx Brothers film. The Marx Brothers style was that plots were really secondary to their anarchic, madcap skits. In truth, the two were usually well integrated in their films, with meatier plots than the conventional wisdom has it, and the skits relatively seamlessly enmeshed in the plots.Here, the plot is often difficult to follow, and when you do manage to follow it, it just isn't that interesting. Despite this, there are still a number of fabulous set pieces. The scene where we first meet Groucho and Harpo in Groucho's private eye office is hilarious. The bedding department scene is good. The climax, featuring an extended chase through the department store, is a lot of fun, including its cartoonish use of wire stunts and camera tricks.But there just isn't enough of that stuff, and one of the Marx Brothers' strongest points--Groucho's verbal bantering, is oddly flat just as often as it isn't. Even the usual musical sequences are problematic, unlike their sublime charm in Go West. Only Harpo's musical sequence and a brief duet with Chico on the piano are worthwhile. Groucho is given a schmaltzy "big musical production number" that goes on too long, is supposed to be funny and isn't, and ends up with Groucho doing little else but mugging and doing his trademark walk while other characters we're not familiar with sing the song.Tony Martin has a song early on in the film that's okay, but doesn't exactly fit the tone of the film, and later, he does another "big musical production number", called "The Tenement Symphony", that is bizarre, to say the least, but not particularly funny. Instead, it's a strange mish-mash of styles that is strongly derivative (in a negative way) of George Gershwin.While Marx Brothers completest certainly can't avoid The Big Store, it's difficult to imagine this being anywhere near the top of the list for any Marx Brothers fan. It's also not a great way to introduce anyone to their work (as they're likely to not be very interested in seeing more), and there are far better films for casual viewers who are not particularly interested in the Marx Brothers.The few hilarious scenes could easily be excised and work just as well (if not better) in isolation, as "random" skits. But the film is very slightly recommendable for them.