A Day at the Races

I like Marx Brothers movies, but for nearly all of them I feel like I'm asked to sit through a lot of fairly dull things for the fun parts. Aside from Animal Crackers and Duck Soup, they've all got these giant musical numbers and a pair of leads who aren't the Marxes- they vary in quality, and in a Night at the Opera, they're fairly well integrated, but overall I'd far rather do without them.

In a Day at the Races, one of the musical numbers is nearly all black people, it makes me feel kind of conflicted- on the one hand, there's some uncomfortable stereotyping, with all of them living in what look like slave quarters and dropping 'who dat' and 'chillun' left and right. Worse, they'res some blackfacing at the end of the scene, and that's always embarrassing, no matter what.

On the other hand, it's awesome. For the first and only time in a Marx movie, there's a musical number where the parts that don't have the brothers featured are exciting and fun as hell, all kinda swing dancing awesome moves and exciting performances and everything. The brothers love it, too, and the implication is that they fit in fairly well with the group. So- is it ok to enjoy it? Can something exploitative, with racist elements, be redeemed by just being fun? I never know how to answer that kind of thing.