Norman Z. McLeod's Horse Feathers sees the madcap comedy antics of the Marx Brothers moments before their boiling point. The very next year they would release their undisputed masterpiece Duck Soup (1933) (a picture which Hollywood would spend the rest of their cinematic careers punishing them for). Horse Feathers sees them working out the last of the kinks that plagued their earlier films. The jokes flow more naturally, the bits are more spontaneous, and there are few (if any) scenes where the brothers recite quips back and forth to each other for several minutes in a single static shot. Perhaps more than in any other pre-Duck Soup film, the brothers are in almost constant movement: climbing over tables, jumping onto women, tinkering with ridiculous props, and playing their trademark instruments (Groucho even has a scene where he plays the guitar!). It's a shame that large chunks of the film have been lost. But their absence fails to ruin a marvelous comedy.
8/10
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