This is a very sad effort from the Marxes, as you can't help but wonder how much better the film would have been if they hadn't messed with an old formula and allowed the brothers to actually work together--Groucho is more the narrator and has no real involvement with Chico or Harpo. Plus, given their age, the team just seems old and tired (with the exception of Harpo).

However, despite these major drawbacks, there are a couple sight gags that are marvelous. HOWEVER, DO NOT READ FURTHER AS THERE ARE SPOILER!! When Harpo is being searched, the stuff they find in his coat is amazing! So, I guess it can be said that this is Harpo's movie. So, the old formula is just lacking.

For their final film, the Marx Brothers are featured in Love Happy which while it has some flashes of brilliance, does not come any kind of close to what they were doing in the Thirties. As a sign of the times. Groucho disdains the false mustache and wig and grows his own upper lip coverage, making him look more like the Groucho Marx I first knew, as the host of You Bet Your Life.

In fact Groucho is thrown into this film almost as an after thought. Until the end, he does not interact at all with Chico and Harpo. He narrates and plays detective Sam Grunion who is on the trail of a valuable diamond necklace that spider woman like villainess Ilona Massey has smuggled into the country in a specially marked can of sardines worth a Maltese Cross.

But the plans go up the spout as Harpo in his capacity as shoplifter, takes all kinds of food from the delicatessen that the sardines were delivered to. The food is for the cast members of a show that is struggling. Dancing ingénue Vera-Ellen gets the valuable sardines though she doesn't know it and the necklace goes on quite an adventure.

Harpo gets the best moments for the brothers in Love Happy. His pantomime skills are at their very best here. I do love that telephone call to Chico when Ilona Massey and henchmen kidnap him and later on when he plays charades with Chico trying to give him a message of danger. Unfortunately it's not enough to carry the film by itself.

Marion Hutton is the singer in the cast and she's Betty's younger sister and former vocalist with Glenn Miller. She had a fine voice, but her style was too similar to her sister and she never really established any individuality after leaving the Miller Orchestra.

Compared to their work for Paramount and MGM in the previous decade, Love Happy just doesn't hit the mark.

Love Happy is the final movie that features the three Marx brothers (Groucho Chico Harpo) in top billing and as the stars. Once again they do the occasional musical performances. This time Frank Tashlin co-writes the script (bringing, I'd imagine, some pure cartoonish brilliance to it, in fits and starts). And it's OK... ish. Actually Harpo is better than OK, but when isn't he? This isn't even his premier work and he's delightful to watch in scenes that should be rote like when the actress asks Harpo to be his manager and he mimes becoming a "big shot" with his feet up on a can of rubbish in a park, miming as well being on the phone with many agents. It's what he was made for as a performer, moments like this.

The main problem for me is a major lack of the brothers interacting with one another - Groucho barely appears in the first half for Pete's sake, and only through limited 4th wall breaks - yet there are a lot of legitimately entertaining musical numbers (really, there isn't a dull one, including a number where a woman sings about being frustrated with motherhood). There's once again another loony but half-baked crime plot, here involving stolen diamonds in a can of... sardines I think, Chico on piano, and a musical that is on thin ice as far as being produced. Objectively this isn't as good a movie as I'm rating it, but I'm being generous because when these guys do click in their scenes they are just that funny. In other words it's better than Room Service (oddly enough this has the storyline that it's closest to),but not by much.

It's also uncanny seeing Groucho without his grease-paint mustache as a movie character with the brothers.