A Day at the Races: Still Faster Than Everything Else

Is it worth your time?

If you like your comedy fast, loud, and completely indifferent to narrative logic, yes. This is for people who think modern movies are too obsessed with making sense. If you need a clean plot or hate people talking over each other for ninety minutes, you will probably want to walk out.

Groucho is at his peak here. He’s playing Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, which is a name that sounds like it was invented by a toddler, but it fits perfectly. He spends most of the runtime just dodging people or trying to flirt with Margaret Dumont, who is once again the ultimate straight-woman. The way she just stands there while he circles her is a masterclass in patience.

There is this one moment where Harpo is in the bedroom, and he’s doing his usual silent routine, but the timing is just… scary good. It feels like he’s playing a different movie than everyone else. He’s in a cartoon, and everyone else is in a slapstick musical.

The plot about the sanitarium being broke? Totally irrelevant. It’s just a clothesline to hang jokes on. Sometimes the movie stops dead for a musical number, and it’s actually a bit jarring. You’re waiting for Chico to break something, and instead, you get a guy singing about a horse. It’s weird, man.

The racehorse stuff feels tacked on. Like, someone at the studio said, "Make sure there's a race at the end so people know what the title means." You can almost see the gears grinding when the movie has to remember it’s about a horse.

Some of the sets look like they’re made of paper. There is a scene where a guy walks past a window, and you can see the background isn't even lined up right. I don't know why, but I love that. It adds to the feeling that this whole production was held together by glue and adrenaline.

I found myself thinking about A Successful Calamity, just because the tone is so vastly different. Where that movie tries to be careful and polite, A Day at the Races wants to punch you in the face with a custard pie. It’s refreshing, even if it’s exhausting.

• The ice cream scene is still hilarious, despite being a million years old.
• Chico’s piano playing is actually kind of beautiful, which is annoying because it makes me stop laughing.
• Groucho’s mustache—is it real or painted? I stared at it for ten minutes.
• The editing feels like it was done with a pair of rusty garden shears.

It’s not a perfect movie. It’s not even a good "movie" in the traditional sense. It’s a captured explosion. You don't watch it for the story. You watch it to see how long they can keep the plates spinning before everything crashes. Spoiler: they keep them spinning until the very last frame. 🐎