| Complete credited cast: | |||
| Groucho Marx | ... | ||
| Chico Marx | ... | ||
| Harpo Marx | ... | ||
| John Carroll | ... | ||
| Diana Lewis | ... |
Eve Wilson
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| Walter Woolf King | ... |
John Beecher
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| Robert Barrat | ... | ||
| June MacCloy | ... | ||
| George Lessey | ... |
Railroad President
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Embezzler, shill, all around confidence man S. Quentin Quale is heading west to find his fortune; he meets the crafty but simple brothers Joseph and Rusty Panello in a train station, where they steal all his money. They're heading west, too, because they've heard you can just pick the gold off the ground. Once there, they befriend an old miner named Dan Wilson whose property, Dead Man's Gulch, has no gold. They loan him their last ten dollars so he can go start life anew, and for collateral, he gives them the deed to the Gulch. Unbeknownst to Wilson, the son of his longtime rival, Terry Turner (who's also in love with his daughter, Eva), has contacted the railroad to arrange for them to build through the land, making the old man rich and hopefully resolving the feud. But the evil Red Baxter, owner of a saloon, tricks the boys out of the deed, and it's up to them - as well as Quale, who naturally finds his way out west anyway - to save the day. Written by Gary Dickerson <[email protected]>
Patchy but still fairly enjoyable Marx Bros. vehicle. Their unique brand of comedy adapts reasonably well to the Western format though, at the end of the day, a lot more could have been done with this situation; the film suffers in comparison with their 'classic' stuff, but even more so when measured against other comics' brush with the genre particularly two ambitious Buster Keaton masterworks, OUR HOSPITALITY (1923) and THE GENERAL (1927), and Laurel & Hardy's (more straightforward but) equally delightful and inspired WAY OUT WEST (1937)!
That said, a number of scenes here deliver the goods: the ticket-office sketch at the beginning, the stagecoach ride, the robbery of the safe and, of course, the climactic train 'wreck; on the debit side: the songs in this one are particularly negligible.
My verdict, therefore, is that GO WEST is a worthwhile comedy but a lesser Marx Bros. film.