Some of the funniest lines I've ever heard come from the mouth of Groucho Marx. Groucho's routine is to, most often, insult everybody else in the cast, usually by playing fairly sophisticated word games. One example is a reply to one of Dumont's statements praising his talents in leadership: "That covers a lot of ground. Say, you cover a lot of ground. You better beat it, I hear they're going to tear you down and put an office building where you're standing. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't leave in a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If you can't leave in a huff, you can leave in a minute and a huff. Say, you haven't stopped talking since I got here. I think you were vaccinated with a phonograph needle." And that's not even the funniest bit involving Groucho and Dumont; there are many more to come, as well as many more bits involving Groucho with other characters.
Chico and Harpo are of a different sort of comedy style (Zeppo is a straight man like all of the other actors, so doesn't really need to be discussed), more akin to silent comedy, although it's only Harpo who doesn't speak. Actually, a lot of the humor involving Harpo is like a surrealistic routine filtered through silent comedy, as most of what he does makes no sense, except to frustrate everybody else around him. A good example is the meeting with the ambassador. When the ambassador asks the spies if they have a record on Firefly, Harpo pulls out -- you guessed it -- a record, of the sort before the invention of cassettes and CD's. The ambassador flings the record up in the air in frustration, and so Harpo pulls out a pistol to shoot the record to bits. Harpo also has a habit of cutting things with his scissors -- like jacket coattails, hair, whatever. Why does he do this? Who knows? But there's something about Harpo's behavior that borders on the surreal, if not quite disturbing, which is why it's amusing.
