The Screengrab : groucho marx

April Fools: The 35 Funniest Movie Characters Of All Time (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

JOHN BARRYMORE AS OSCAR JAFFE IN TWENTIETH CENTURY (1934)

No American actor ever made theatrical stylization work as well in movies as Barrymore, and when he played men of the theater, the impacted layers of self-parody in his performance just kept popping like strings of firecrackers. This movie was based on a play that in turn was based on an unproduced play called Napoleon of Broadway, a label that, if anything, sells the maniacal producer Jaffe short -- given enough men on horseback and a sufficiently isolated island, Napoleon could be stopped. Gorgeously over the topic from the word go, Barrymore plays him as a man who works behind the scenes in the theater because no stage would be big enough for the performance he calls his life. (PN)

MISCHA AUER AS CARLO IN MY MAN GODFREY (1936)

A Russian emigree born Mikhail Semyonovich Unskovsky, Auer was one of the supreme comic character actors of a great era for them, a man whose sometimes mournful-seeming countenance could never conceal the fact that there was helium in his shoes. His role here set the tone for much of his career: he plays a pianist who, having been adopted by rich society grand dame Alice Brady as her "protege", settles into her family's Art Deco mansion and easily adapts to being their pet. Auer was also memorable as a henpecked husband in a Western cow town in Destry Rides Again, and in Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin, where, as the manager of a flea circus, he rolls up his sleeve and announces to his charges, "Soup's on!" (PN)

HARPO MARX IN JUST ABOUT ANYTHING

As a kid, I watched endless hours of Marx Brothers movies (courtesy of my dad). I felt the most kinship with the fast-talking bullshit artist Groucho. But it was quiet, sad Harpo who stole my heart. I didn't quite get why he wouldn’t talk. No matter, his kindly face with the rubber mouth and big sad eyes, together with that little horn, said more than an entire film's worth of yakking from Groucho. Who was he supposed to be, exactly? Dunno and don't care. In Monkey Business, someone suggests he's a "dumb Swede?." Perhaps he is a caricature of a FOB Irishman to to go along with the other ethnic stereotypes that the Brothers' characters seem to be based on. The mystery adds to his allure. No matter his origins, it would seem that Harpo's hobo owes something to Charlie Chaplin's little tramp, but where Chaplin verges on the annoying, the comic genius of Harpo is that he is always understated and soothing, even at his most burlesque. Like a good children's book, Harpo appeals to everyone precisely because he never speaks down to the audience. (SCS)

MARLON BRANDO AS GRINDL THE GURU IN CANDY (1968)

Candy is routinely derided as a godawful, amateurish mess, a barely watchable '60s relic and a travesty of the Terry Southern-Mason Hoffenberg novel. Furthermore, Brando's participation in it is often pointed to as the ultimate degradation that the great actor submitted to during the dark period between his '50s triumphs and his early '70s comeback. Let's define our terms here: this movie really is a piece of shit. But Brando is hysterical in it. Playing a fraudulent horndog of a guru whose Indian accent turns into a New York honk as he applies himself to the task of getting into the heroine's pants, and looking like a cross between a Roman senator and Alice Cooper, he dives right in and applies the broadest comic strokes, single-handedly bringing a MAD-comics tone to this crass, tinny show. As Brando became increasingly estranged from his own craft, more and more it was the opportunity to play comedy that lured him out of the fortress he'd built around himself with his own flesh, and in movies like The Freshman (1990), he showed that he could join in with the critics and gossip columnists in making fun of himself, and do it with more wit and grace than any of them could. (PN)

JACK NICHOLSON AS GEORGE HANSON IN EASY RIDER (1969)

Any good clown has a hint of tragedy. Jack Nicholson takes it to the limit as alcoholic ACLU lawyer George Hanson — the only latent liberal in a small hick town. Hanson is in the habit of poncing around Main Street in white linen suits and his starspangled football helmet, getting hammered daily and then sleeping it off in the local jail. Perhaps that is the kind of thing you can get away with in your own town if your father's a big shot. Better not try it outside city limits though. When the hippie bikers come through he seizes the opportunity to escape. This can't end well. (SCS)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Sarah Clyne Sundberg

April Fools: The 35 Funniest Movie Characters Of All Time (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

WILL FERRELL AS RICKY BOBBY IN TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY (2006)

Will Ferrell’s Anchorman may be more absurd, but Talladega Nights is still the SNL alum’s greatest big-screen achievement to date, a NASCAR-set bit of lunacy that mocks American culture while simultaneously exhibiting fondness for it. Via the character of Ricky Bobby, a nitwit car-racing star, Ferrell manages to send up our national gluttony and materialism, as well as Southern political and social conservatism, with a no-holds-barred goofiness that’s nonetheless underscored by affection for his redneck milieu and its inhabitants. To keep things evenhanded, Sacha Baron Cohen’s aggressively homosexual French F-1 champ Jean Girard provides a hilarious caricature of liberalism. It’s Ferrell’s titular clown, however, that truly embodies the film’s fair-minded attitude, his Ricky Bobby an egotistical good ol’ boy whose jingoism is as inane as his predilection for saying grace to the baby Jesus – an extended bit that gets funnier with every subsequent viewing – and yet whose me-first ridiculousness is laced with a childish kindness that makes him both an embarrassing and endearing personification of 21st century southern America. (NS)

CHEVY CHASE AS CLARK GRISWOLD IN CHRISTMAS VACATION (1989)

While the original remains the most popular, and European Vacation is probably the funniest, the Vacation series’ most heartwarming entry was 1989’s Yuletide saga, in large part because its holiday setting provided Chevy Chase with the best opportunities to convey not only Clark Griswold’s buffoonery, but to root that silliness in his deep, abiding love of family and tradition. In this second sequel, Clark’s homestead is invaded by parents, in-laws and the clan of Cousin Eddy (Randy Quaid), and this raft of supporting players – which also comes to include the Griswold’s prissy Yuppie neighbors (Nicholas Guest and Julia Louis-Dreyfus) – helps take some of the comedic burden off of Chase. Despite surrounding him with talented co-stars, however, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’s spotlight nonetheless remains squarely on its headliner, whose pratfall skills are in fine form, and whose sympathetic embodiment of his well-intentioned doofus patriarch – aggravated by his kin, disappointed over not receiving the work bonus he was counting on, and tormented by a squirrel let loose in his abode – lends the manic, messy proceedings real warmth. (NS)

PAUL REUBENS AS PEE-WEE HERMAN IN PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985)

Too much fun in a porn theater may have destroyed Paul Reubens' career – and, consequently, the life of his iconic Pee-Wee Herman character – but his 1985 big-screen debut, helmed by first-time director Tim Burton, stands up as a perfectly realized idiosyncratic original. In this fanciful, carnival-esque saga, Reubens' strange-talking man-child Pee-Wee embarks on a cross-country odyssey to recover his beloved red bike, which he believes was stolen by his rich, spoiled, nasty neighbor Francis (Mark Holton). Even on his first feature, Burton’s flair for crafting strange, wild, wondrous visions was in full effect, as was Danny Elfman’s aptitude for offbeat scores. Nonetheless, it’s Pee-Wee who cements his place in the film-comedy pantheon. From the colorful, gadgety confines of his home (where he chows down on some Mr. T breakfast cereal), to the Alamo (whose basement he foolishly hopes to investigate), to a roadside bar where he famously displays his dance moves while surrounded by a horde of nasty-looking bikers, Pee-Wee proves himself a one-of-a-kind weirdo whose irrepressible cheer is infectious, and whose childlike innocence is endearing. (NS)

ALBERT BROOKS AS ALBERT BROOKS IN REAL LIFE (1979)

Albert Brooks has built a career – and a pretty fine one, if you ask us – out of portraying himself as a complete jerkoff. Even when he’s not playing a fictional character who’s kind of a schmuck, he’s kind of a schmuck: the “Albert Brooks” he plays in his films is a rampaging egomaniac who’s completely oblivious to how he comes across to people. Nowhere is this better realized than in his first full-length feature as a writer and director, 1979’s Real Life. This criminally underseen comedy, which brilliantly anticipates the reality-TV craze of 20 years later, sees Brooks playing himself as a desperate-to-please filmmaker who decides to film a normal, average American family; the comedy lies in the fact that he quickly assesses that the moviegoing public will be bored stiff by normality and averageness, and immediately sets about interfering with their lives for entertainment value. Unsurprisingly, this ruins the experiment, and starts to ruin the family’s life as well – but right up until the very end (where he hits upon the brilliant idea of burning their house down in order to provide his disastrous movie with a suitably exciting ending), Brooks is completely blind to the fact that the only thing wrong with his movie is that he’s the one making it. “Albert Brooks”, as portrayed by Albert Brooks, is so fine a portrait of a self-absorbed Hollywood phony it must have made Robert Evans blush.

CHICO MARX AS BARAVELLI IN HORSE FEATHERS (1932)

Although we’ve chosen his role as Baravelli in the campus comedy Horse Feathers as representative, it’s really just a stand-in for any Chico Marx performance. In the Marx Brothers’ films, Groucho’s role was to be the anarchist, the fly in the ointment, the wild card who refused to play by society’s rules and hilariously wrecks the smooth running order of things; Chico’s role was to do the same thing – only to Groucho. Often stereotyped as the dimwitted punster, Chico’s roles went far deeper than that: he was a true comic foil to his younger brother, reminding him that he couldn’t always win, that there was always someone there who could outhustle even the great Groucho – even if it was by playing dumb. Groucho was the subversive riddle that brought down authority, and Harpo was the dynamite bomb thrown right in the middle of the room, but Chico was a Chinese finger puzzle: it looked so simple, but once you were caught in it, no matter how smart you were, you couldn’t get out. Nowhere is that more clear than in the famous “Tutti Frutti” scene in Horse Feathers, where a supremely confident Chico prevents a slow-burning Groucho from betting on the horse he wants to win. It’s one of the greatest examples of pure comic timing ever captured on film.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Nick Schager, Leonard Pierce

Famous Last Words: Round 2, Week 5

Paul Clark — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

OK folks, be honest- if I’d included the name of the character to whom last week’s quote was addressed, would that have made it easier for some of you? As it stands, the line proved a bit trickier than I’d originally intended. Perhaps if I’d quoted the entire line, which began with the name “Emily…” it might have done the trick. Emily, of course, being the object of the kinda-sorta affection of Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx) and played by eternal Groucho foil Margaret Dumont in the Sam Wood’s A Day at the Races. I’ve always thought the film was compromised somewhat by the softening process MGM applied to all of their Marx Brothers movies, with inane romantic leads and added (non-harp) musical numbers. But despite being (relatively) toothless Marx mayhem, Day at the Races- supposedly the first film Roger Ebert ever saw- is still pretty great.

No names missing from this week’s line, so let’s see how well you do with it:

“First time the Streamliner’s stopped here in four years.”
“Second time.”

Submit your guesses to famouslastwords@nerve.com no later than 11:59 PM Eastern next Wednesday. Good luck!