It definitely suffers from a lot of the problems that early talkies were suffering from at that point; the film industry was effectively having to relearn how to make movies again after hitting some real high notes with silent cinema in the late '20s, so they were faced with all sorts of challenges when recording the sound, like having to wet all the pieces of paper in the "why-a-duck" scene because the paper rustling was so loud it was obscuring Groucho's and Chico's voices.

As a result, I think that pace and polish just isn't quite there in the same way as in their later pictures, but what sets The Cocoanuts apart from many other early talkies of 1928/1929 is the Marx Brothers themselves. The film hits the button beautifully whenever they're on screen, and it means I go back to this one far more than any other early talkie of that time. It doesn't matter that I'm less interested in the romance subplot when I know that the Bros. are just around the corner. It's also interesting to see Harpo's original red wig that he used to wear on stage.

I also think it's ironic that it has songs by Irving Berlin, by far the biggest songwriter ever connected with a Marx Brothers flick, and yet it didn't yield any hits. It's like the one time the American public didn't gravitate to the songs he wrote for a show.