Animal Crackers (1930)
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Animal Crackers Movie Review
Animal Crackers is a 1930 Pre-Code comedy film directed by Victor Heerman and starring the Marx Brothers. It’s another solid, but overrated Marx Brothers flick.
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“Africa is God’s country,
and he can have it!“
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Mayhem and zaniness ensue when a valuable painting goes missing during a party in honor of famed African explorer. Let’s first comment on the humor. This film employs very broad humor which has a lot of varieties to it, and of course some are more successful than others.
The dialogue is successful. The line about Africa was to me the funniest highlight, but there are also some other lines here that are simply hilarious and very clever in their sophisticated double entendres. Unfortunately, only about half was funny, the rest of the dialogue wasn’t all that great or I personally failed to get the jokes as they were too timely for this period.
The situational comedy, the mayhem, the chaos, that all worked only to a degree, but not amazingly. The same goes for the slapstick which got some fine moments for sure, but overall it felt rather repetitive in these overly repeated, same jokes over and over again.
Yes, Animal Crackers is definitely very uneven in its quality. When it works, it really works. But when it fails, it’s rather boring and slow owing to uneven pacing and those supporting characters which are unnecessary and thoroughly uninteresting.
Zeppo and Chico here are entirely forgettable whereas Harpo shines in this particular movie. He was overly used, but still a lot of his gags, mimes and silent jokes really worked out well for the movie and they were amusing. As for Groucho, he’s also pretty good, but overall disappointing as I expected a longer screen time for him. His dialogue is the best though, expectedly so.
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Animal Crackers is also a musical and I personally did not care for these songs. I liked how light and energetic they are, but none of them are particularly memorable, and ultimately they weren’t needed here. Hooray for Captain Spaulding is the only one I liked to a degree. The sound is actually decent for its time, albeit it was probably much restored.
Animal Crackers is another solid, but overrated Marx Brothers film which is highly uneven in its quality. The dialogue is great and some lines are both funny and clever. The slapstick also worked to a degree. Groucho and Harpo stole the show from the less memorable other players and the musical numbers themselves were energetic, but quite unnecessary.
