This 1940 musical film offers a hilarious picture of second-generation Jews in New York City and their search for love. Broadly contrasting rabbinic ways with modern notions in a country where the rules for romance are very different, Americaner Shadchen portrays the dilemma of attempting to live between two worlds. The film's hero, a model son and successful businessman named Nathan Gold, has been a failure in his pursuit of a bride. The film opens with a bachelor party, Gold's eighth. Hisweddings have never worked out, and this one too is aborted.
Gold then decides to become an advisor in human relations, a shadchen, as a way of finding a wife.
With his servant Morris as his foil, Gold proceeds to solve the mysteries of modern relationships by setting up an office where human affairs can be approached scientifically. The torch which was carried by Sholem Aleichem was passed on to the Marx Brothers, wrote critic James Yaffee. Nothing could be more Jewish than their desperate zany insults, designed to deflate their pompous enemies but eventually making nothing but trouble for themselves. Animal Crackers is the brothers second movie, adapted from their Broadway hit. The plot is silly and the laughs plenty.