Film Summary DCLXXIV (Copacabana)


Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda star in Copacabana. Playing two semi destitute entertainers trying every little trick in the book to squeak by a semi honest, but still ultimately freeloader living.

It seems their luck is about to run out as they can't even get into a basic line nightclub to try and push their own Act. The bills are piling up and the man with the reversed Hitler moustache is telling them they've got to pay with cheques that don't bounce.

Groucho Marx (Lionel) is at his wit's end until he's given the idea to put Carmen on as a solo act.
She can sing, she can dance and overall she's got a more ''attractive'' personality when just working on her own performance.

So Lionel decides to take her back to the club.
Only this time he pretends to be her press agent so he can try and sign off a negotiation and get her in as a dancer to the club.
But the owner of the Copacabana; A Steve hunt. Isn't interested in a dancer. He wants a singer. So Lionel decides to alter Carmen's Image give her a bit of a Moroccan twist.
Now she's Fifi the French Moroccan singer.
She's able to grab the managers attention far more than Carmen ever did.
At first it looks like it's on the up-and-up, this strange new performance is going to get her singing contract after all.
But Steve decides that not only does he enjoy Fifi's singing.
But he also wants Carmen's dancing to go alongside her.

And this is where the crux of the entire movie is set.
This young woman asked to dance between two different identities going from one performance to the next, keeping everything on the level and trying not to give up the goat.
All the while a love triangle is blowing up between her Steve and Lionel and it all culminates in a disastrous but very entertaining dramatic climax.

We get the old typical story of singular act becoming super famous and pushing an unknown performance into the Star-Spangled American sensation.
The whole thing eventually has to come crumbling down when the barrage is lifted and the identity of this mysterious Moroccan French lady is discovered.
Really it's not the basic story that's all that entertaining. It's pretty par for the course, but it's the performances mainly between Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda that really sell the whole thing.

The two of them completely chew the scenery of this movie. They get lots of wonderful one lighters off of each other. They have a surprisingly fun amount of chemistry and I honestly thought marxs was going to be the one to steal the show.
But Carmen's the one that ultimately does it.
She's super witty, she gets to have fun with all these ridiculous over-the-top love triangles (that don't even affect the main story as she and Lionel are already in a relationship with each other. It's a kind of neutral unemotional jealousy between them) and on top of everything else.
She has fun dancing montages and a fantastic singing voice (assuming it is our actual voice I honestly don't know.)
Everybody else pulls their weight too.
The acting is fun and energetic, the set design is basic for the most part but complex and colourful where it needs to be.
Its overall just a really entertaining movie. Comedic, well-paced, fun music and a story that's easy to predict. But ultimately appropriate for its determine setting.

We have yet another movie that compliments my theory that all great films contain either a room smashing scene or a monkey.
In this case we have both yet again.
A monkey pops up for a couple of seconds at the beginning of the movie when Lionel is trying to steal nuts to eat for dinner.
And Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda completely destroy one of the rooms when they pretend that Carmen is having a fight between her two different personalities.

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