Tonight going here I saw one of the all time great comedy feature films, and one of my favorite Looney Tunes cartoon. The feature was Duck Soup starring the four Marx Brothers. The cartoon was The Daffy Doc. While these are both films I have seen so many times I have them practically memorized, I must confess I have never seen either in a theater with an audience, and what a difference that makes. The films felt brand new, and it was almost as if I had never seen them before. I may have known every joke by heart but laughing at them along with a decent sized audience, I couldn't help but enjoy these jokes even more than when I saw both films for the first time (okay I can't remember the first time I saw The Daffy Doc but the point still stands). Throughout these films the laughter only let up in time to hear the next joke and then it would start all over again. The only other times I have heard this much laughter from an audience was the many times I have seen Laurel and Hardy films, but no modern movie or any other old film comes close to the laughter here. All this laughter in an audience is not the same as a TV laugh track. Instead this is a contagious laughter that I simply could not resist joining. In fact during the big production number of The Country's Going to War (from Duck Soup), I was laughing so much, I had to stop and take a breath of air.
Really seeing these films on the big screen with an audience is such a different experience from watching them on DVD, or TCM (as fantastic as those options are). If you ever get a chance to see The Marx Brothers and/or Looney Tunes cartoons this way, do not pass it up. I can guarantee you, as much as I like some modern movies, they will not have the audience laughing anywhere near this much.
For more information about The Old Town Music Hall: http://oldtownmusichall.org/
-Michael J. Ruhland
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