Victor Heerman's Animal Crackers proves that the addition of the Marx Brothers doesn't automatically make everything better. Though the film is littered with bright spots of comedic genius, the film is weighed down with a plodding pace, an unnecessary sub-plot with a wannabe painter and his wife, and jokes that I am not sure would have worked even back in the 1930s. This is clearly a transitional film for the Marx Brothers. They hadn't quite completed the shift from vaudeville and silent comedy to the talkies. Many of Groucho's famous comedic tirades suffer from flat deliveries. It almost seems like Groucho wasn't used to the idea of performing for a camera, which records dialogue at a conversational volume, instead of booming and projecting his voice as he would on a live stage. I know that when it comes to "plots" in Marx Brothers films, the less said the better. Nobody goes to a Marx Brothers film to enjoy a narrative. But apparently Heerman didn't know that because Animal Crackers is almost nothing BUT a narrative. It concerns Groucho as a famous African explorer who returns to America only to become entrapped in a bizarre mystery involving a stolen painting. Later Marx Brothers films like Duck Soup (1933), A Night at the Opera (1935), and A Day at the Races (1937) understood that the plot is merely a means by which to provide set-ups for comedic gags and routines. But Animal Crackers suffers under the delusion that we might actually care about what happens to that missing painting. The narrative is practically more important than the Brothers! There are some rightfully beloved quips and gags in Animal Crackers, but it isn't up to snuff with their later films.
6/10
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