ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930)

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Title: Animal Crackers
Year: 1930
Director: Victor Heerman
Format: Blu-ray
Label: Arrow Academy

Notes:

Released the year after THE COCOANUTS and, despite running about 6 minutes longer, ANIMAL CRACKERS breezes by as the high-society farce proves a much better vehicle for the talents of the Marx Brothers. The sets are better, the visual jokes pack a bigger punch and the verbal stuff is just as good, if not better.

That said, the absurdity is off the scale in this feature. I suppose it was partly meant as a satire of the pointless behaviour of degenerate socialites but it's so wacky you have to work quite hard to see it as a cohesive story rather than a set of bizarre sketches.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Harpo features in every screen grab included here. As much as I enjoy the comic talents of Groucho (looking very much like Alan Alda's M*A*S*H* inspiration!) and Chico, it's the visual comedy of Harpo that stands out when compiling visual highlights. That's more a fault of the nature of this blog than anything to do with the film I suppose.