Synopsis
During the Florida land boom, the Marx Brothers run a hotel, auction off some land and thwart a jewel robbery.
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Cast
- Groucho MarxHammer
- Harpo MarxRed
- Chico MarxPastrami
- Zeppo MarxJamison
- Oscar ShawBob Adams
- Mary EatonPolly Potter
- Cyril RingHarvey Yates
- Kay FrancisPenelope
- Margaret DumontMrs. Potter
- Basil RuysdaelDetective Hennessy
Recommendations
- 75
Chicago Reader
An eminently watchable antique, this was the Marx Brothers' first film — a literal recording of their Broadway smash hit. - 75
The A.V. Club
Only about half of 1929's The Cocoanuts, an early sound-era comedy, was entrusted to the Marx brothers' vaudevillian antics; the rest was left to drippy Irving Berlin songs, kick-lines of bathing beauties, and a half-baked subplot about a stolen necklace. Yet the good scenes establish the Marx dynamic to hilarious effect. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
This is a crude, shapeless talkie, a technically unsophisticated film in which the sound is static and the camera immobile, with the comedians leaping into the set scenes. Yet the boys are there in all their frenetic glory. - 70
The New York Times
Fun puts melody in the shade in the audible pictorial transcription of the musical comedy The Cocoanuts. - 70
Time Out
It shows its age, what with indistinct sound, fluffed lines, quaint choreography, quainter songs, a stilted supporting cast and positively arthritic direction. But the Brothers' energy and madness is never in question: when the laughs come, they come loud and long. - 70
Variety
That's all it has --comedy-- but that's enough. [29 May 1929, p.14] - 60
The New Yorker
The material hasn't been paced for the screen; there are dead spots (without even background music), but there are also a lot of funny verbal routines and a musical burlesque of Carmen, and Harpo, as a fiendish pickpocket, is much faster (and less aesthetic and self-conscious and innocent) than in the Brothers' later comedies.
