Animal Crackers

Hurrah for Captain Spaulding, the African explorer, skirt chaser and wise-cracking guest of honor at a posh Long Island house party. High jinks meet high society when he and his cronies mix it up with social climbers and stolen paintings. Written for the Marx Brothers, this slapstick madcap musical busts out with zany songs and lavish dance numbers. Released as a film after the 1929 Wall Street crash and recently adapted, it proves that you can’t keep an anarchic comedy full of pungent one-liners down.