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7.7/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 7.7/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Duck Soup remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you like your comedy fast, loud, and completely uninterested in making sense, then yes, absolutely. This is for the people who get bored by modern movies that explain every single joke before it happens.
If you need a coherent plot or you’re the type of person who gets annoyed when characters act like total idiots, stay far away. You will likely hate every second of it. 🦆
Duck Soup is barely an hour long, which is a blessing. It starts, it screams, and it stops before you even realize you haven't blinked in twenty minutes.
Groucho is just a machine here. He fires off insults like he's trying to hit a quota. There’s a specific bit involving a mirror that I’ve seen a dozen times, but it still feels like magic every time Harpo does it. You’re just watching two guys try to be the exact same person, and somehow it’s the funniest thing on earth.
The whole war thing? It’s just an excuse for them to put on funny hats and ruin nice rooms. There's this one moment where they keep changing uniforms—like, way too many times. It serves no purpose. I love it.
It reminds me a bit of the frantic pacing in De frente, marchen, though the Marx brothers are definitely more committed to the bit.
I don't think this movie was made to be analyzed. It feels like they just walked onto a set, threw a bunch of props around, and told the cameras to keep rolling until someone got tired. It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s barely a movie, really. It’s more like a live-action cartoon where nobody gets hurt but everyone loses their mind.
Honestly, watching this makes me wonder why we’re so obsessed with 'perfect' scripts nowadays. Sometimes you just need to let a guy in a greasepaint mustache run a country into the ground while his brother chases women with a horn. 🎺