There isn't a parent around who hasn't, at one point or another, compared their holiday household to either a three-ring circus or a screwball comedy.
We get exactly what they mean without needing further explanation. There's not a scrap of usable wrapping paper in the house, the ham is burning, the relative who invited himself ate all of this morning's breakfast pastries last night, and the keys to the front door have suddenly gone missing (they're likely wrapped and under the tree).
This makes the Marx Brothers the ideal dates for Christmas Day. The loose-iest, goose-iest, prank-awesome-ist set of siblings ever to grace the silver screen take the usual chaos people typically experience around the end of the year and transform it into high, and high-jinx-y, art.
That's a major reason why you're apt to find Marx Brothers marathons pop up around November and December: The unserious '30s-era icons and the yuks-filled must-dos of the yuletide are a natural pairing.
So let us thank our lucky ducks that the New Beverly Cinema is delivering for the silly-of-heart Marx mavens of Southern California, and on Dec. 25 no less.
The shenanigans start at noon with "Horse Feathers," continue at 1:35 with "A Night at the Opera," and wrap up at 3:30 p.m. with "Animal Crackers."
You know what that means, of course: You can be by the tree to open gifts and be with the ones you love early in the day, and then you and the ones you love can make for the New Bev to laugh out any lingering stress from the go-go-go of the pre-Christmas rush.
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Then you're out of the cinema in time for din-din. (Fact: You can say "din-din" on holidays and no one can give you a hard time.)
But who will gift you a Groucho get-up, complete with fabulous mustache, on Christmas morn? Best revise your list for Santa as fast as Harpo toots his squeeze horn.
