Animal Crackers

Animal Crackers
August 28, 1930
Paramount
Comedy, Musical
DVD
B

The trailer says this is ten times funnier than The Cocoanuts.  (Joe Adamson would say five times.)  Of course, the trailer also says that the Marx Brothers were the four funniest men on earth!  Still, there's no question that this is an improvement over the first movie, in every regard.  Yes, it's funnier, including some now famous lines, like "How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know."  Everyone, even Margaret Dumont,  seems more relaxed, and Groucho is starting to really zing people, as well as break the fourth wall (as when he apologizes for one joke).  Harpo and Chico get more musical numbers, sometimes with Groucho wisecracking during.  There are no long, drawn-out numbers by other people.  The "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" song is far better than anything in Cocoanuts, and not surprisingly became Groucho's theme song on You Bet Your Life.

Even the romantic couple are a huge improvement, particularly absolutely charming Lillian Roth.  What other '30s ingenue could get away with lines like "What would you suggest, Mom?  Suicide?" and "We'll be married and divorced in no time"?  Or catch her saying that it might turn out that her boyfriend really is a good artist after all.

What does this movie title mean?  Well, Captain Jeffrey/Geoffrey Spaulding (his name is spelled differently in the opening credits than in the newspaper story) is the famous African explorer and hunter, "bagging tigers" and catching elephants.  While there's often a borderline racism in Marx Brothers movies, I give this one a pass because when he comes in carried by tribal bearers, you just know he hired them somewhere in the city before heading out to Long Island, just so he could make a fabulous entrance, playing off the prejudices of Mrs. Rittenhouse and her guests.  Even the line about the undeveloped pictures of native girls I think of more as an example of getting something past the not-yet-strictly enforced Production Code.  (In Cocoanuts, he offered Mrs. Potter [Dumont] "snappy necking," and here Roth sings about petting!)

There are some weak spots, notably the boxing match and bridge game that Harpo and Chico have with Mrs. Rittenhouse and her frenemy, but overall it's a solid movie.  Speaking of solid, Robert Greig, who plays the plump butler here, will return in Horse Feathers.

For the second movie in a row, Zeppo is playing a character named Jamison.  There are other things that are carried over, not yet (on film anyway) stale routines, among them a lot of Harpo and Chico's physical humor, like their fights, and Harpo giving people his leg.  A joke or two of Groucho's is repeated, like the one about Dumont's character being close to retirement.  But the movie is surprisingly fresh and "modern" (there's a reference to Frigidaire, and Groucho spoofs Eugene O'Neill), while still definitely a 1920s story in early '30s form.  (Again, based on a play.)