Classic Movie Review: Animal Crackers
By Josh Spiegel
January 24, 2011
Animal Crackers gets in some good jokes, but they’re mostly jokes of the time. What Duck Soup is able to do is speak to the skepticism regular people have always had of those who have all the power. Animal Crackers, despite having something of a mystery driving the story, is just one in a long line of movies that are meant to make people feel good about the world for 90 minutes as opposed to thinking about the Great Depression. Those films served a major purpose in the 1930s, but now, there’s only so many high-society comedies that work well. While Animal Crackers has the Marxes skewering dowagers and rich folk like Margaret Dumont, it doesn’t feel like a bracing bit of fresh air so much as par for the course. The Marx brothers would always make fun of rich people in their work, so the jokes don’t ring as well.
Of course, the real problem with the Marx brothers, if there was ever a major one, is that Margaret Dumont managed to feel more like a fourth member of the family than Zeppo ever did. What was Zeppo’s function in the films? He played the social secretary, the buttoned-down guy. But where’s the humor in that? Even in Duck Soup, where he’s less intrusive than usual, I have to wonder what he is doing in the movie aside from riding on his brothers’ coattails. I don’t know enough of the history of the four brothers’ work in vaudeville and on Broadway to know what his special skill was or wasn’t (Harpo, obviously, was a skilled harp player, and Chico was pretty solid on the piano), but the movies almost actively push Zeppo to the sidelines. Perhaps the most notable fact about Zeppo is that he was skilled enough as an impressionist to play Captain Spaulding many times on Broadway, filling in for Groucho. Who knew he had it in him?
Animal Crackers doesn’t break new ground for the Marx brothers, but it’s a reminder of how funny they were, and how infrequently their fast, verbal humor makes an appearance in modern comedy. These days, we’re lucky if a great comedy doesn’t also involve gross-out humor or other R-rated sight gags. The Marxes, from Groucho’s biting wordplay to Harpo’s bulging, comic eyes, were pioneers of the day, even if they weren’t always perfect. Their filmography is hit-and-miss, but Animal Crackers stands out as one of their best, mystery and romance aside. Groucho, Chico, and Harpo live on today, in spirit, while Zeppo remains something of a has-been. He can say he was there, but unlike the others, all he can say he did is about as much as any of us would have done had we been in his place: stand, watch, and try not to laugh on screen.
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