In my day . . . well, actually 70 years before my day . . .

Saw A Night at the Opera last night and laughed until my face hurt. I'd heard their MGM movies weren't as funny as the older ones, of which I've only seen Animal Crackers, which was indeed funnier because it didn't have a story to distract from the funniness. The older I get the less I think movies, least of all comedies, are an appropriate medium for stories. Nonetheless, A Night at the Opera was very fucking funny, right until the last second.

We saw it in the cinema and although I was too busy laughing to think about it at the time, it was neat how everybody in the full salle was in pain laughing at 70 year old jokes. Though from time to time we'd be laughing at some Groucho gag the francophones hadn't got, and at other times the subtitles apparently aged better than the audio and they were laughing while we bemusedly awaited the next gag.

Not to sound like a codger so old I should be long dead by now after living out my four score and seven or whatever, but American comedy films have only suffered. I blame an industry-wide inability to work as ensembles. The funniest films I've seen out of there lately, like The 40 Year Old Virgin and Napoleon Dynamite, and, well, that's it because I hate American comedies so much that I avoid them altogether unless I'm on aeroplanes now, are so funny because people in them are funny together and not because there's a star. Because stars aren't funny. Like Ben Stiller, for example. He's not funny. An individualistic society with a celebrity fetish might be okay for standup but it sucks for funny movies. So does Ben Stiller.

Another thing about the Marx Brothers that has only suffered since in American comedy (although not so much in British comedy, for some reason, where you went on to see people like Dudley Moore or Hugh Laurie getting into it) is the musical moneyshot. When Harpo plays the harp and Chico plays the piano, and it's a little bit funny while being delightful. Imagine. A delightful comedy. Well, actually, don't imagine, just go rent a Marx Brothers movie. And enjoy this clip of Dudley Moore being slightly delightful.



BTW, Dudley Moore is much more delightful and also much more filthy with Peter Cook in Derek and Clive Get the Horn et al. But I'll leave off discussing the high (yet filthy) pinnacle of British humour until another day.