We will never see the likes of the Marx Brothers again, and woe to those who try to be them. On the other hand, we’ll never see a new Marx Brothers film, so it might be interesting if others tried to carry that torch. It was in that frame of mind that I approached 1992’s Brain Donors.
At least the characters aren’t named Groucho, Chico and Harpo. Eyebrow-raising casting has John Turturro, Bob Nelson and Mel Smith, respectively, in roles analogous to those characters, even if they aren’t exact copies.
Turturro hews the closest to the obvious inspiration for his character. No knock on Turturro’s abilities, and I have seen him in comedies before, but I went in expecting him to fail as a parallel-universe Groucho. To my surprise, he brings the required manic energy. Then there’s his line deliveries, which are spot-on, even if few of the lines would have been worthy of the original. Fortunately, he doesn’t do any of the trademark shticks, such as rampant eyebrow-wriggling, that would have pushed his characterization into parody.
Similarly, Bob Nelson’s performance has many of the elements that bring to mind Harpo, though with some noticeable differences, the most significant being he talks. But he does have a trench coat, and it is from the pockets of this he can extract a seemingly endless number of unlikely items. I do not recall having seen Nelson in anything before, but he fares the best of the cast. Part of that may be due to him getting the lion’s share of the most absurd material.
The Marx Brothers films often seemed to struggle to find the best uses for Chico. Curiously, Brain Donors has the same problem with Mel Smith as the surrogate for that character. Smith is far from being the straight man here, but he is rarely given any business that does more than augments what Turturro or Nelson are doing.
Similar to the characters being approximations of three of the Marx Brothers (there’s no dopple-Zeppo here), the plot is clearly an homage to A Night at the Opera, but with some key differences. The most noticeable of these is ballet being the form of high art skewered this time. It’s interesting how little impact that has, and it made me realize the Marx Brothers’s film could have been about either art form with next to no alterations.
There are many deliberate similarities to the earlier picture, some of which work better than others. The film opens with Nelson waking up in the morning and destroying an alarm clock with a giant mallet, recalling a toss-off Harpo bit from Opera. There’s also some business with a contract which, while funny, could never hope to equal the famous “Sanity clause” bit this intends to mirror. There’s even Nancy Marchand as a surrogate for the wealthy dowager character Margaret Dumont made famous in multiple Marx features. The group even helps a couple of young, struggling and love-struck artists (Spike Alexander and Juliana Donald), who are just as thinly drawn as Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones when Groucho and the gang came to their aid.
If there’s any quotable lines in this, they would be from Turturro’s lines, but few seem to really resonate outside of context. Probably my favorite that could work is his complaint when he and Nelson are seated at the ballet: “These seats are terrible! They’re facing the stage.” I also took note of this line: “Someday you’ll have my children. They’re out in the car, if you want them.”
Everything in the plot builds up to the debut performance of the ballet, which is gleefully subverted in many ways. Some of the gags are of very base humor, such as Nelson dropping a whoopee cushion into the back of the villainous star dancer’s (George De La Pena) tights. Others are like outtakes from the legendary Looney Tunes short What’s Opera, Doc?, such as when Nelson wears a duck costume while Turturro and Smith pose as duck hunters.
Speaking of ducks, Brain Donors opens with an extensive Will Vinton sequence which, while well-done, feels a bit out of place. The most curious aspect of this animation is the frequent appearance of a duck, which might have made more sense if the film had kept the original title of Lame Ducks. Then again, neither title suits the film well, and its initial title recalls Duck Soup for a picture that mostly apes A Night at the Opera. And yet, that opening sequence might have had the strongest moment of association to the Marx Brothers for me, as it had me already asking, “Why a duck?”
Dir: Dennis Dugan
Starring John Turturro, Bob Nelson, Mel Smith
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray