Animal Crackers

Back to the Marx Brothers, I've only got a couple more to go. This was their second film and based on their hit Broadway play of the same name. It's not as good as their next film, Monkey Business, but it's not as bad as their previous film, The Cocoanuts. It still suffers from a poorly used kind of theatrical direction (though not the extent of their previous film). Groucho is the renowned African big-game hunter, Captain Spaulding. From this film comes one his most famous lines, "I once shot an elephant in my pajama's, how it got in my pajama's I'll never know." Though as Pauline Kael correctly points out, the funniest line in the film may be, "Signor Ravelli's first selection will be Somewhere My Love Lies Sleeping with a male chorus." That one had me laughing on and off for quite some time. It's always joyful, even when it's not that good.