Acensbart
Excellent but underrated film
SeeQuant
Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction
Roy Hart
If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
Hitchcoc
"Hooray for Captain Spalding" became the theme for Groucho Marx. He used it on his TV show "You Bet Your Life." When he enters to this theme in Animal Crackers with that crazy dance, turning his legs out, looking like an African explorer with a pith helmet, it is one of the all time classic moments in the movies. The one liners go on and on so the plot is inconsequential. What there is of it involves the theft of a valuable painting and a worthy fake. People are frustrated until the Marx Brothers get involved. Of course, they are hardly helpful, just causing chaos. And it makes no difference. Because there is no situation they can't screw up and eventually land on their feet. We are always going to be treated to a piano solo by Chico and some harp by Harpo (in addition to his off the wall craziness). Great movie.
weezeralfalfa
The second Marx Brothers talkie film shares quite a few features with their first film: "Cocoanuts". Both were adaptations of recent Broadway shows starring the Marx Brothers. Both were filmed in Paramount's Astoria Studios, in Astoria, Queens, N.Y.. Subsequent films of the series would be filmed in Hollywood. Margaret Dumont plays a wealthy socialite in both films, and something very valuable is stolen either from her or in her house, and the remainder of the film is mostly about finding and recovering this item. In both, Harpo comes up with the missing valuable. In both, there is a young romantic couple, who sing at least one song, and are awaiting an opportunity for the man to prove himself in his profession before they can get married. To me, "Cocoanuts" is the more interesting film of these two and has a more coherent plot. Next to "Room Service", this is my least favorite of the brothers films. The disappearance and reappearance of the various copies of the painting gets very confused and highly contrived after a while. Also, a lot of the humor is rather lame.The new musical numbers were composed by the team of Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar, who composed the new music for several others of the brother's films. They were honored in the 1950 film "Three Little Words", starring Fred Astaire and Red Skelton.
SimonJack
The Marx Brothers were masters of comedy who entertained audiences for four decades in vaudeville, radio, films and television. Five of their films are on the American Film Institute's list of America's Funniest Movies. "Duck Soup" of 1933 is fifth on the list. "A Night at the Opera" of 1935 is number 12, and "A Day at the Races" of 1937 is number 59. Those are my favorites, and all three have zany plots. "Animal Crackers" was the second feature film the brothers made, when Zeppo was part of the acting team. In place of a plot it has a thin line of a story used just to string together dozens of vaudeville skits and bits. Some are very dated and of interest only to see what people laughed at a century ago in entertainment theaters. The filming appears stagy, as if it was done during live vaudeville acts. The performers often speak to the audience off stage. And it has a stage feel even to the point of an echo and sound reverberations as from a sound stage with poor acoustics.Some of the lines still are funny today. But the long list of routines hardly resembles a movie. It's somewhat interesting and entertaining, but it can't hold a candle to the later great comedies the Marx Brothers gave us.
mark.waltz
When you've got Groucho cracking wise, Chico destroying the English language, and Harpo chasing the girls, you're not really going to care either about the plot or the stilted, boring romance between Zeppo and Lillian Roth. All you want is a ton of Groucho insulting imperious Margaret Dumont, Harpo playing the leg game and as many malapropisms from Chico as possible. The minor plot concerns the search for an original painting replaced by a fake, but is totally over-shadowed by the vaudeville style gags which influenced many fairly recent comedy film makers. You'll howl as Groucho not only crows about the elephant in his pajamas but a traveling polar bear as well. Harpo manages to steal all of Dumont's silverware and sheds it like raindrops when confronted. Chico confuses Groucho by twisting everything he says, and Dumont keeps her cool even when being insulted. While others in their series, particularly at Paramount, had better plot, this is non- stop laughter, and it is easy to see why this ranks as probably their most famous film, even if "Duck Soup" and "A Night at the Opera" are slightly better.
