Love Happy (1949)

People are voting emotionally.

Lack of good storyline.

hyped garbage

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Recently I watched LOVE HAPPY, the last Marx Brothers film, on Amazon Prime. When I read up on the production history of it, I learned the film ran into some financial difficulties and almost was not completed. The only way to finish the movie, by raising the extra funds, was to invent a rooftop scene where Harpo is chased by some crooks.And as Harpo runs around during that sequence (which lasts for more than five minutes), he whizzes past billboards that flash product information in bright lights. About half those companies are still in existence today. So whoever worked for Wheaties' ad department made a smart decision, because every time that film is seen from 1950 into infinity, Wheaties continues to get on-going advertising from it.As for the finished product, this is not a terrible Marx Brothers effort. Nor is it one of their best. But I think most people will enjoy Harpo's antics.

As a "Harpo stand alone movie" this picture works. Harpo gets way more screen time then in any of the Marx brothers movies (he is in fact the main protagonist) and he is as funny as usual.Sadly as a "Marx Brothers" movie it works poorly. Chico play much smaller role then usual and don't have nothing funny to do (there is a callback to the Ice-cream scene in "Day at the races" which came out like a poor attempt to get a chip laugh) and Groucho is for about 10 minutes all together, and you can tell his character was force into the script so it would had all three Marx brother. In fact there isn't a single scene with all three of them and Groucho nearly interacts with his brothers. Big mistake.If your a Marx Brother fan Its simply distracting and I think it would work way better as a Harpo solo movie (like "A girl in every port" was for Groucho), but at the same time I must admit it was entertaining and Harpo made me smile... as usual :)

LOVE HAPPY was originally intended to be a solo effort by Harpo, but he couldn't get backing. It was Mary Pickford who suggested that Groucho and Chico become involved, then she, one of the original United Artists, would finance it. So The Marx Brothers ended their cinematic career with an atypical feature, but an improvement over THE BIG STORE.Groucho shares barely any screen time with his brothers, serving mostly as narrator. This is because he was host of the popular television show YOU BET YOUR LIFE, and had only a couple of days available for filming. (He even wears his real moustache instead of the grease paint one he sported for the previous features!) Chico fares better, easily falling into the patter he long ago perfected.Obviously, this is not the film to introduce someone to The Marx Brothers. (That would be DUCK SOUP or MONKEY BUSINESS anyway.) Instead, this entry is dessert for the viewer who has already viewed the other dozen Marx Brothers features, but is still hungry for more.

Because I like the Marx Brothers I am willing to give this film a 5. If it had starred Wheeler and Woolsey or the Ritz Brothers, I might have given it a 2.After ROOM SERVICE, only A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA had any real merit among the final Marx Brother films. In the case of these two films, the former was based on a successful Broadway farce (which is still produced occasionally), and the latter had some planning involved in it as well (a novelization of the complete screenplay - certain parts were edited out of the final film - was published). The other four are mediocre at best. And LOVE HAPPY is the weakest.Yeah, Harpo gets some nice moments, like him riding the neon lit "Pegasus" on a rooftop sign. He and Chico have one or two good sequences together (one of those patented "Chico-verbally-interpreting-Harpo's-mimed-message" sequences is good). Chico also has a wonderful moment when he tries to be romantic to Ilona Massey, promising to cover her in sardines. But these are so few and far between that the weaknesses in the film are shown.Yeah, Groucho is an afterthought. He has that one famous moment with Marilyn Monroe, but that's it. It looks like much of Groucho's material ended up on a cutting room floor. His "Watson" figure is Eric Blore (an interesting combination of comic talents there), but Blore too is only briefly seen. One wishes to know what more there was to that sequence.But even if we discount shortchanging Groucho, what is left is nothing to shout about. It is a disappointing film, especially as it was the last real Marx Brother feature film. The following movie the brothers were all in was THE STORY OF MANKIND, and each was in a separate segment. There were three television shows they were in together (though one was with other Hollywood comics like Ernie Kovacs), but none of these had the strengths of their best nine movies.