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14 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Marx Brothers at half speed - and Douglas proves a comic, 20 July 2004
Author: theowinthrop from United States

Groucho Marx, in one of the interviews in Richard Anobile's book about the brothers, admitted that the films after the death of Irving Thalberg (he meant after A Day At The Races) were not his favorite, and he considered them the team's worst films. This is not a totally fair evaluation. Two of the films (Room Service and A Night in Casablanca) were as good as Horsefeathers or Animal Crackers. But it must be admitted that At The Circus, Go West, The Big Store, and Love Happy (not to say their unfortunate solo performances in The Story of Mankind)were below par Marx. All had good moments in them - but only moments. If one can cut these films to only highlight their highlights the resulting anthology film would be almost as good as Room Service and A Night in Casablanca.

Groucho is Wolf J. Flywheel in this film - one of his catchiest pseudonyms. Like his later, tamer film role as Sam Grunion in Love Happy, he is a detective. Like Grunion he is living a hand to mouth existance, owing rent. In the last moments of the film Charles Lane forcibly reposes his car, an ancient vehicle (for 1941 America) with the sign, "Welcome Admiral Dewey, Hero of Manilla" on the back - the battle of Manilla Bay was in 1898, and the car looks like it just arrived on the scene before Dewey died in 1917. Groucho is therefore definitely interested in impressing and romancing his normal foil, Margaret Dumont, for financial security. In the end they and Harpo are in the car as it is towed away.

It was not the first time that Groucho played a character named Flywheel. In the missing year of 1934, while he and his brothers left Paramount after Duck Soup failed (and when Zeppo decided to become an agent rather than a straight man - a wise decision as he was a very successful agent), Groucho and Chico made a series of radio programs about a firm of shyster lawyers, Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel. The tapes of these broadcasts no longer exist (apparently) but the scripts have been published. Many of their routines appear to have been used in these scripts, which are funny. One hopes the tapes will still manage to turn up one day.

The best moments in the film are those dealing with Groucho trying to impress Dumont, and his confrontations with Douglass Dumbrille, as the conniving, pompous store manager Grover. Harpo's fantasy moment with two other Harpos playing a trio is fine. Chico really does not do too well in the film - nothing in particular standing out. This is not enough to sustain the film, until the final ten minutes.

The brothers have photographed Grover paying two goons to assassinate Tony Martin (the heir to Dumont, the owner of the store - Dumbrille wants to marry her to get control of the store). Dumbrille tries to get the photo back, and chases the brothers through the deserted departments of the store.

Douglas Dumbrille was a recognizeable movie villain throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He appeared opposite Crosby and Hope in Road to Utopia, and opposite Abbott and Costello in Lost in a Harem. In such roles he usually just gave the normally competent straight dramatic villainy that he gave in such films as Treasure Island (he was Israel Hands, who tries to kill Jackie Cooper/Jim Hawkins). But it was different with the Brothers, as he appeared in two films with them. He had played Morgan, the racetrack owner in A Day at the Races. Dumbrille was not the only actor who played in several Marx Brother films - Walter Woolf King was Gasparri in A Night at the Opera and was one of the two villains in Go West. Sig Ruman was Herman Gottlieb in A Night at the Opera, Dr. Leopold X. Steimetz in A Day at the Races, and Hans Stubel (the Nazi War Criminal in hiding) in A Night in Casablanca. Margaret Dumont appeared in seven Marx films, and Thelma Todd in Horsefeathers and Monkey Business. Ruman, Dumont, and Todd were all expert comic actors, and perfect foils for the brothers. King was okay, but no more. But Dumbrille was the interesting repeater in the bunch.

In A Day at the Races, Dumbrille had little to do, except to threaten Harpo for not throwing a race, and looking apoplectic while the brothers demolish his racetrack to prevent a race from occuring before their missing horse can be found. As such, his performance there is little different from his performance in Road to Utopia or Lost in a Harem. But the conclusion of The Big Store is different. Here, he steals the chase from the stars of the film

It is true that by 1941 the brothers were too old for the stunts needed - and so they use doubles (compare it to Go West a year before, where they still do some of their own stunt work). In some of the tumbles Grover is supposed to take, one can see that Dumbrille has a double too. But the difference is that the director noted that Dumbrille's unsmiling, stiff face can be used to punctuate what a ridiculous figure he could become. For he does become ridiculous, despite the grave reason for his chasing the brothers. Suddenly he has to do such ridiculous things as ride a bicycle in the store (a kid's bike at that) while wearing his floorwalker outfit) to catch the brothers who are on skates. He puts on skates too at one point, and falls into a counter full of ladies hats. He disappears behind the counter, and raises his head to show he is wearing a lady's hat with a flower on top. It's a priceless image, for his expression has not changed.

It is Dumbrille who makes the forced chase worth watching - it was (perhaps) his finest moment as a comic actor. I wonder if the brothers (especially the critical Groucho) ever stopped to realize how they had briefly abdicated their movie to a supporting player.

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
The Big Store (1941) **, 1 August 2004
6/10
Author: JoeKarlosi from U.S.A.

This latter Marx Bros. comedy still contains some vintage moments between Groucho and his longtime foil Margaret Dumont, with good comic dialogue written for Groucho once again. The scene where she visits his office to hire him as a detective, as he and Harpo pull off a ruse by making it appear that Groucho's not a starving nobody but a first-class private eye, is as good as anything I've seen in their other pictures.

Things get bogged down later with musical numbers (I mean, what else is new?), but I was impressed by many of the sets in the grand department store.

Some good, some not-so-good.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Not great, but has its moments, 21 December 2001
7/10
Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

The Big Store is not one of the Marx Brothers' best films, but it's worth watching once. Groucho still delivers a few good one-liners and insults to Margaret Dumont. Harpo and Chico have some good scenes (watch as an Italian immigrant accuses Chico of mocking his accent!). I actually think that the musical numbers in this one are wonderful, except for those by Tony Rogers, one of the many love interest duds who grace the Brothers' flicks. Maltin's right: The Tenement Symphony is a suicide-inducing number, and easily a low point in all of the Marx Brothers' films, except for the entire running time of Love Happy. But there's a great song and dance number when Groucho first enters the store. You have to catch the woman singing a jazzed-up version of Rock-a-bye Baby; I have never seen a more eerily emotionless visage on a human being. It's creepy and oddly beautiful. Chico and Harpo perform an awesome piano duet. There's also a scene where four young kids play the piano like Chico, which is very charming. And Harpo's harp sequence is pretty good (he plays Mozart on the harp, and then his two reflections accompany him with other, various string instruments). The final chase sequence is rather annoying. The Marx Brothers' fall came about when their films started overutilizing special effects, fast motion, and sound effects to enhance the comedy. Still, The Big Store is not a disaster, by any means. 7/10.

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7 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Fast-forward when The Marx Brothers are not on the screen, 10 September 1999
Author: MrVB from New York

Same old note: The Marx Brothers INGENIOUSLY twist any phrase or object into HILARITY.

Unfortunately, this film has a plot.

The usual hilarity when The Marx Brothers are left to their own devices, but too much screen time not dedicated to The Marx Brothers.

NOTE: If you have a heart-beat and love to laugh yourself silly, you MUST see Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, The Coconuts and Monkey Business.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Not the best, 13 January 2006
6/10
Author: drexelgal from United States

By 1941, Groucho didn't want to make any more movies. The Brothers continued to do so just to keep oldest Brother Chico afloat, due to his gambling habits.

Someone commented earlier about Virginia O'Brien, the deadpan singer in the "rockabye" sequence. The deadpan delivery was her "shtick", and predated a similar approach taken by Keely Smith some years later. Legend has it that the first time a spotlight fell on Ms. O'Brien for an on-stage solo, she froze, an delivered her song with a pre-Botox facial paralysis. The audience thought it was part of the act and roared approvingly with laughter. From then on, Ms. O'Brien sang no other way. (She also sings a few bars of the Jerome Kern song, "A Fine Romance" in the semi-bio, "'Til The Clouds Roll By".) The big store is best remembered (and viewed) for the rousing "Sing While You Sell" piece about 38 minutes into the movie.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
THE BIG STORE (1941) **1/2, 10 October 2004
Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta

I watched this for the first time on DVD after having missed it twice on local TV over 10 years ago. Well, as I pointed out in my comments on A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA (1946), I approached THE BIG STORE with little or no expectations, and so I ended up being pleasantly surprised by it.

While certainly no classic (what with the musical numbers being a total drag!), I nonetheless found it quite palatable for what it was; the Marxes were in pretty good form here (as were their regular foils Margaret Dumont and Douglas Dumbrille), and the picture afforded them a fair number of good lines (not familiar to me from reference books like the ones in CASABLANCA) and situations (the scene in Groucho's office already mentioned by Joe, the bedding department scene featuring a typically flustered Henry Armetta, and the hilarious climax in which even Dumbrille gets embroiled in the slapstick). Also, it was nice to see Groucho and Harpo share some scenes as they usually interact more with Chico albeit separately.

In the end, I'd say that I enjoyed this film enough to make me want to purchase the bare-bones (but thankfully low-priced) DVD from Artisan of the Marxes' independently-produced LOVE HAPPY (1949) – which, reportedly sports a pretty satisfactory transfer coming from this company. I had seen the film as a kid on Italian TV but, while I remember individual scenes, I can't recall what my overall opinion of it was!

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
"Flywheel's in Command.", 8 January 2006
8/10
Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

After Zeppo Marx refused to move on with his brothers to MGM from Paramount, the Marxs usually secured the services of another player, usually a singer to function in Zeppo's nondescript place. Usually that person had a lot more personality than Zeppo did. It was Allan Jones in two films, Kenny Baker in one and in The Big Store it was Tony Martin.

The still very much alive, but retired Tony Martin, had one of the great voices of the last century. He never made the screen impact that other singers did, though he was in some very good films. His main media outlets were records, radio, and as one of the premier nightclub attractions, especially when he appeared with his second wife Cyd Charisse. Martin had two songs to sing in The Big Store, the much maligned Tenement Symphony and a really nice ballad, If It's You.

Martin is the heir to one half of Phelps Department store. The other half is owned by his aunt Margaret Dumont. The Hastings Brothers, who own a chain of department stores, are looking to buy this one.

Manager Douglass Dumbrille has been doing a little embezzling on the side and he's afraid that if Martin sells his half, he's taking a stretch up the river. After Martin becomes the victim of an attempted murder, Dumont hires who else, detective Wolf J. Flywheel who is of course Groucho Marx.

By a happy coincidence, Groucho has Harpo as a sidekick and Harpo's brother in the film Chico is a friend of Martin's. So now we have all the Marx Brothers working at the store.

The Big Store is usually dismissed as one of the Marx Brothers lesser films, but it's always been a favorite of mine. Another reviewer said there were too many musical numbers. I don't think there were any more or less than in other films of their's. The running time is a bit short so it might seem like there's more.

The highlight for me is always the final chase seen through the store, especially since Douglass Dumbrille joins in the fun. Dumbrille on screen usually plays some serious villains, probably his best known part is that of Mr. Cedar the lawyer who is milking the estate that Gary Cooper is inheriting in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.

Dumbrille is just as successful dealing with the Marx Brothers over embezzlement as he is with Gary Cooper. But here this very serious and obviously classically trained actor joins right in the slapstick fun. Dumbrille looks like he's having a ball. Later on he would really cut loose in a couple of Abbott and Costello films.

A question to all movie fans. Who do you think had the most inventive screen character names, W.C. Fields or Groucho Marx?

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
This "Store" Was Only Open For Business The Last 15 Minutes, 3 December 2006
5/10
Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States

The final 15 minutes saved this VHS from being traded in for something else, as most of the film is not up to the Marx Brothers lofty status. I guess by the 1940s, the boys were in a decline, for various reasons. One of them is the writing. There were always a ton of jokes and sight gags in the MB films and most of them were dated and corny......but still funny, even 70 years later. However, the jokes in here - and the songs - are so dated and not much to start with that they simply aren't funny. That, and the songs are likewise, not really appealing.

As mentioned, the only thing I personally enjoyed here was the hectic last 15 minutes with a chase through a department store. That was classic slapstick material and it still works. Unfortunately, the rest of it did not work. For much of this film, the store was "closed" for (Marx Brothhers) business.

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Confusing plot, too often flat, and frequently absent Marx Brothers, but a few hilarious scenes, 11 June 2005
7/10
Author: Brandt Sponseller from New York City

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.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
I Loved this Film, 8 October 2005
9/10
Author: hrv212 from United States

Tony Martin's "Tenement Symphony," although seemingly misplaced in the movie, was great, in that its melody was classic in tone, and Martin's voice only enhanced the overall effect. The "ditzy" chase scenes towards the finale of the film, although exaggerated, and obviously performed by stunt doubles, and stop-action, or jerky photography, were "over the top" for belly laughs. Harpo's mirror-reflection musical moment was a great deep breath of rest from his usual zaniness; it was magic, as was Chico's duet with him. For me, born in 1936, my viewing it at still a tender age of nine or ten only made this little boy happy and delighted with the film. If I were to be critical at the age I am today, I would say, the film doesn't come close to what the Marx Brothers films intended from earlier works...but just see it again through the eyes and heart of the child I was, and you'll agree that, gee; what a funny film the Big Store really was.

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