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Hilarious Marx Bros. film with Groucho as the new president of Huxley College and Zeppo as his son, who convinces his dad to recruit professional football players to help the college's losing team. Groucho sets out to do just that but instead of getting two pros, he recruits speakeasy 'icemen' Chico and Harpo. Chaos naturally ensues at the college leading up to the big football game, which has to be seen to be believed.

All of the brothers are in top form here, with the main three getting lots of funny bits and Zeppo getting possibly his best role from any of their films. Thelma Todd appears in her second Marx Bros. movie, playing the girlfriend of villain David Landau who sets out to seduce Zeppo and winds up seducing the rest of the brothers, too. Sadly there's no Margaret Dumont this time. This is probably the best Marx movie that didn't feature Dumont. Nat Pendleton plays one of the football players on the opposing team. Look out for Walter Brennan as a commentator on the big game. Some funny tunes and several great gags, including "The password is swordfish," the crazy football game, Groucho teaching a class, and all those funny things Harpo pulls out of that coat of his. It's one of the Marx Brothers' best. Definitely recommended.

One of the better Marx Brothers movies. This one came right in the middle of their prime, between Monkey Business and Duck Soup (probably their two best films). While Horse Feathers isn't quite as funny as either of those, it still has plenty of laughs. The Marx Brothers were still young, but they knew what they were doing now. Again they take advantage of the film medium to do things they never could have done on stage, like the wild football finale. The involvement of the supporting cast is also kept to a minimum, which is always a good thing in Marx Bros. films. They do go back to relying on too many musical numbers. Groucho's opening song "Whatever it is, I'm Against it" seems awkwardly out of place, but it's interesting to see all four brothers do their own version of "Everyone Says I Love you." It's not their very best work, but it's not far from it either.

Plot (or should I say plan of attack)— Entering a college campus, the gang gets to deconstruct the whole idea of higher education.

The gags fly faster than speeding bullets. There's no real let-up, not even for hasty romantic interludes with Zeppo and Todd. It's like the boys have a hundred pages of material to squeeze into 70-minutes. Harpo's got more to do than usual, even a harp solo, while Groucho is at his caustic best with a zillion one-liners. I did miss his usual foil, Margaret Dumont, who should have been lurking somewhere in the faculty lounge. Instead, as a college president, he gets to insult anything collegiate, including America's unofficial national religion-- football. And check out that big game that looks more like Ben Hur than a sports contest. But what I really liked was Thelma Todd in the slinkiest gowns this side of Jean Harlow. And what a fine comedienne she was; too bad her life ended as several probing pages in Hollywood Babylon. All in all, this is the chaos brothers at their liveliest, and may cause highschoolers to rethink the whole idea of higher education.

There's a lot of good material in this Marx Brothers feature, with just enough plot to hold it together and to set up a very entertaining final sequence. As usual, there are a number of memorable scenes to choose from when picking your favorite parts of the movie.

This time the brothers are let loose on a college campus that is getting ready for a big football game. Groucho and Zeppo are the new college president and his son, while Harpo and Chico arrive from a nearby neighborhood in time to add their own kind of confusion. The campus setting allows them to satirize many aspects of college life, and there are some good off-campus scenes as well, most memorably the 'swordfish' scene in the speakeasy. It's capped off with a hilarious football game that is one of their best sequences.

This ranks highly on almost anyone's list of favorite Marx Brothers features - if you're a fan, make sure to see it.

Don't watch HORSE FEATHERS expecting anything like a coherent plot, developed characterization or sophisticated filming technique. Shot on a shoestring by Paramount, with more than its fair share of stock footage, it has the feel of a quickie; a more up-market version of the Hal Roach two-reelers that were released at the same time with Laurel and Hardy. On the other hand HORSE FEATHERS does preserve for posterity some of the Marx Brothers' finest routines. Groucho has never been better as a crazy professor charged with the responsibility of rescuing a poor school; his dialog fairly crackles with one-liners, and he is a past master at handling mock-love scenes. Harpo has his fair share of visual set-pieces, notably when he leads a police officer a merry dance in and around his dog-catcher's van. He also has the chance for one of his harp solos. Chico enjoys himself most during a speakeasy scene, when he and the other two brothers have great fun with the so-called 'secret' password. He gets to play the piano in another specialty number. The ending is a bit weak, with a crazy football game stretching the audiences' credibility to the limit, but all in all the film is great fun; the humor stands up well eight decades later.