“One morning I shot and elephant in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas I don’t know”. If you’re a fan of witty wordplay with a dash of old-school Hollywood glamour, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve seen this Marx Brother’s classic, but we’re pleased to report that even after multiple rewatches, the jokes still land.

One of the Brothers’ earliest (and in our humble opinion best) big screen outings, Animal Crackers finds the comic quartet embroiled in a madcap art heist (is this becoming a theme?). Famed African explorer Captain Spalding (Groucho) is to be the guest of honour at the unveiling of a valuable masterpiece, but chaos and hilarity ensue when the painting goes missing and Spalding must leap into action to solve the case. He is helped (and hindered) along the way by an enterprising musician (Chico), a professor with questionable academic bona fides (Harpo), and his earnest secretary, Jamison (Zeppo).

To be honest, the plot is incidental, the premise is established as quickly and efficiently as possible – is it a stretch to call the expositional newspaper headings a sort of precursor to the Star Wars opening crawl?… Yes, yes it is – and what plays out from there is a series of what Grouch might call “strange interludes”, where the foursome show off their multitude of talents in true Vaudevillian style. Along the way we are treated to Harpo’s signature style of slapstick (and mandatory harp solo), Chico’s totally and delightfully un-PC Italian schtick, and of course Groucho’s iconic one-liners*.

Being pre-code, we are treated to such risqué lines as:

“We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren’t developed. But we’re going back again in a couple of weeks!”

But the whacky, zany and unpredictable action belies a well-rehearsed and perfectly timed piece of theatre. No surprise really, given that it spent six months on Broadway before transferring to the silver screen.

As always our protagonists are joined by a rich cast of supporting characters. The fraternal heroes barrel their way from one set-piece to the next, with sub-plots so varied as to belong to seemingly different films: Young lovers/co-conspiraros John and Arabella appear to have been cast in a Fred-‘n-Ginger picture, complete with romantic duet; art collector Rosecoe W. Chandler (or should we say Abie the fishman?) is clearly nearing the denouement of his own identity-fraud-comedy-crime-caper; and what is going on with Hives the butler? Why is he so shady? What was he in prison for?!? If you’re looking for a conclusion to any of these plot threads, you are probably taking this a little too seriously. Because, well, art is art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west, and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh… Now you tell me what you know…

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*Zeppo is also there… we’re not entirely sure why either.