The Marx Brothers – A Documentary: Time Marx Is On

This documentary has the absolute bare minimum of an actual product.

What we have here are 50 minutes of clips that don't seem to even be in order, jumping around the brothers' lives regardless of what the sparce narration may have just mentioned. And some of them are just plain misleading – they were hardly the main characters in the cartoon that was referenced.


Such is the level of apathy in this release, that even the DVD's title page mis-spells its own name as "Time Marxes On."


What saves this production though is the sheer quality of these clips. Most of them are from TV appearances much later in the Marx Brothers' lives, and as such offer fascinating glimpses into the professional legacies they created for themselves. The sight of a post-retirement Groucho still singing and dancing despite some of the notes now being beyond him is the sort of joyous thing that TV producers usually stop us seeing. In this instance, Groucho's refusal to sit down and be old is just priceless.


However if it's the Marx Brothers' story you want, then my advice is to simply read the back – it's much more informative than the programme, and I'm not joking.