Duck Soup (1933)
Directed by Leo McCarey
Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.
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What critics compared Duck Soup to
The plucky nature of Baron Cohen’s protagonists harken back to Chaplin — and the easiest point of comparison is “The Great Dictator,” right down to the crude Western imitation of foreign language that forms Wadiya’s native tongue — but the creators of Wadiya owe a tremendous debt to “Duck Soup” and its own fictionalized dictatorship, Freedonia.
Although the movie very casually follows the progress of the romance and the assassination scheme, Cohen and the director, Larry Charles , are about as dedicated to plot as the Marx Brothers; the movie's spiritual ancestor is " Duck Soup " and Groucho's Freedonian dictator Rufus T. Firefly.
In much the same way that the allegedly original schtick that Cohen employed in both "Borat" and "Bruno" was little more than a more vulgar variation of the comedic sensibility that the infinitely funnier and more incisive Andy Kaufman found himself publicly crucified for two decades earlier, "The Dictator" is a film that, despite the claims to its uniqueness, owes much of its existence to two of the most famous comedy films ever made--the Marx Brothers classic "Duck Soup" (1933) and Charlie Chaplin's landmark "The Great Dictator."
The film, a surprisingly violent and kinetic slapstick comedy reminiscent of Clive Barker's "Midnight Meat Train," begins with one character aping Harpo Marx's blowtorch lighter bit from Duck Soup and ends with scenes that recall Vincent Ward's visionary The Navigator.
Indeed in the rustic fictional nation of Zubrowka one can almost hear echoes of Freedonia, the nation of the Marx Brothers’ 1933 comedy “Duck Soup,” although this film has none of the brothers’ anarchic energy, of course.
All this is to say that the film’s setting is a bit more developed than, say, a glorified throwaway gag like Duck Soup’s (1933) fictional republic of Freedonia.
The action on the field is convincingly staged (no "Any Given Sunday"-style operatics here) and Yakin, who directed the underappreciated "Fresh" and "A Price Above Rubies," finds a nice balance between the gridiron drama and the subplots about tensions in the community, in the school and even in the coaches' offices.
That said, all this film’s multilevel daring comes to a head when the two Joes face off over a diner table; it’s the mirror scene from “Duck Soup” for an age of personality crisis.
The action on the field is convincingly staged (no "Any Given Sunday"-style operatics here) and Yakin, who directed the underappreciated "Fresh" and "A Price Above Rubies," finds a nice balance between the gridiron drama and the subplots about tensions in the community, in the school and even in the coaches' offices.
But director Boaz Yakin ("Fresh," "A Price Above Rubies") uses that predictability as a strength.
As Gerry's caring, but prejudiced girlfriend, Kate Bosworth (1998's "The Horse Whisperer") makes a minor impression with her few touching scenes in the second half, and Hayden Panettiere (1999's "Message in a Bottle"), as Assistant Coach Yoast's determined and precocious 9-year-old daughter, Cheryl, who narrates the picture as an adult, is appropriately precocious, delicately balancing her childish innocence with a wise-beyond-her-years dedication to her father's profession.
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But the "once upon a time" exists exclusively in one particular movie junkie's head, where the combat exploits of the Dirty Dozen combine with the madcap slapstick of Duck Soup, where the hardboiled swagger of Sam Fuller meets the grisly gore of Eli Roth (the Hostel director stars as one of the Basterds), where comic shtick and over-writ jive reach a tsunami of camp excess.
Jojo Rabbit is billed as a “satire,” but true satire sticks to its guns, either by exploding language and logic altogether, as in Duck Soup , or by icily juxtaposing small-minded, egotistical clowns and large amounts of horror, as in Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin .
Who would want to see a scabrous “Duck Soup”?
This is just the opening movement to a grand satire driven by profound cynicism about self-obsessed leaders — “Duck Soup” with real dictators.
Yet its bleakness is offset by its anarchic spirit, which summons up the ghosts of Duck Soup, Million Dollar Legs, and other screwball skewerings of authoritarianism.
With its equal-opportunity buffoonery, demented slapstick and what must be the longest-running hummus joke in film history, "Zohan" is not just a side-splitting comedy, it's very nearly a brilliant comedy - a rude, crude update of the Marx Brothers' anti-war classic "Duck Soup."
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That is the same tone I have heard, and used, in discussing such subjects as " Some Like It Hot ," "The Producers," "Blazing Saddles," "Airplane!,"…
There aren't many things more reliably hilarious than a Marx Brothers vehicle, but besides arguably Duck Soup , none of them are particularly well made.
Peel back the surface of a lot of great comedies and you’ll find a core of righteous anger — whether it’s the war cries behind “Duck Soup,” the racial tension within “Blazing Saddles,” the distrust of religious fervor in “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” or the political cynicism of “Wag the Dog.”