- While A Day at the Races is neither the best nor the worst Marx Brothers film, it is definitely one of the most musical. At this point, anybody who has seen even one of the comedy team's films knows to expect Chico goofing around on a piano and Harpo strumming a harp. (The fact that the harp is reconstructed from a gleefully demolished broken piano is an added bonus.) Likewise, nobody should be surprised to encounter a dull, extended musical duet featuring the two non-Marx leads, Allan Jones and Maureen O'Sullivan. What no audience member would reasonably expect, however, is the film's other major musical number, which stars a sprawling cast of talented black performers (including Ivie Anderson and Dorothy Dandridge) jazz dancing, gospel singing, and...setting up a gag where the Marx Brothers appear in blackface. Yeah, it's a really weird mixed bag.
- Half of the film is set in a sanitarium, where Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho) attempts to heal, romance, and cajole Mrs. Upjohn (Margaret Dumont), who had never been diagnosed with an illness until she met the good doctor. Incidentally, Hackenbush is actually a horse doctor, although he promises he'll "never look at another horse" if Mrs. Upjohn would just marry him. As its title suggests, the film also visits a racetrack, where Tony (Chico) happily pushes both "tootsie-frootsie" ice cream and betting paraphernalia. In the film's funniest scene, Tony sells Hackenbush piles upon piles of betting manuals, none of which seem to be of any use with or without the others. Constant musical interruptions aside, this is otherwise a fairly standard Marx Brothers picture, although Sam Wood's direction in the horse races and a chase scene is notably above average for a movie of this kind.
