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There’s no one else like Groucho Marx. No one in film or television comes close to him these days. No one comes close to any of the Marx brothers, not Chico, not Harpo, not even Zeppo. Well, okay, we can ignore Zeppo (at least within their movies, the other brothers seemed to). But Groucho, Chico, and Harpo are comedic icons unparalleled in cinema. That’s part of the reason why it’s so troubling that movie executives of the 1930s had to ruin every Marx brothers movie with romance. The twisted excuse for a love story between Groucho and his eternal foil, Margaret Dumont isn’t the problem; no, in most of their otherwise classic comedies such as A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera, a boring romantic subplot is hustled in to attract audiences who apparently want to do more than just laugh.

Animal Crackers, their 1930 classic, does the best job possible of any such Marx comedy to make the romantic subplot actually important. That none of the four Marx brothers ever got lucky within any of these movies isn’t exactly disappointing (there’s a running gag throughout this one, in particular, where Harpo chases around a buxom blonde). The real issue is that there’s plenty of subversive and crazy hijinks going on throughout Animal Crackers and everything grinds to a halt when we cut away from the main action and focus on two young lovers who pretty much just happen to be in the same house as Groucho and his gang. Groucho couldn’t really get involved in a romantic storyline, and that’s because who’d buy him as a wooing paramour? His constant jibes at Dumont (as Mrs. Rittenhouse) cheerfully skewer and mock conventions of the genre, instead of enforce them.

As with most of the Marx comedies, the plot is barely a thread: Groucho plays famed explorer Captain Spaulding, returning to New York to tell wild stories about his exploits to members of high society. When a valuable painting is stolen while he’s there, he helps investigate the theft. Like a few other of their films, Animal Crackers has a few songs, but that’s because this film is based on a Broadway show of theirs. Classic songs such as “Hello, I Must Be Going” and “Hooray for Captain Spaulding,” which would both help define Groucho’s career on television, appear here, as do many classic quotes of Groucho’s, including this gem: “One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know.” Animal Crackers is not the best of the Marx films, but it’s one of the sharpest and wittiest.

It’s not just the intrusion of romance that keeps Animal Crackers from not being the best (for me, the very best Marx film remains Duck Soup, as insane and hilarious as ever more than 70 years after its release). In some ways, what makes Animal Crackers close to the best, but nothing as close as Duck Soup, is that it’s content just giving us what we expect from a comedy like this. Groucho will be plenty funny, with lots of great one-liners. Chico will sound-a like he’s-a an Italian. Harpo will mug for the camera and laugh. There’s nothing wrong with this formula, but a movie like Duck Soup packs in all of these jokes (along with some great silent humor, including the iconic gag with two Grouchos and a mirror) and makes sly comments about politics that are as resonant today as they were in 1933.

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