because they're a bunch of zany kooks. [Thalberg] says, "You gotta put a love story in your movie so there'll be something to root for, and you have to help the lovers get together." Most critics at the time disliked it because of its "dated" look at politics. Some modern critics are also unimpressed. Christopher Null believes, "the send-up of Mussolini-types doesn't quite pan out. Take the comedy, leave the story." Even Groucho himself did not initially think too highly of the film. When asked the significance of the film's politics, Groucho only shrugged and said: "What significance? We were just four Jews trying to get a laugh." Nevertheless, the Brothers were ecstatic when Benito Mussolini took the film as a personal insult and banned it in Italy. Also, the residents of Fredonia, New York, protested because they feared that the similar-sounding nation would hurt their city's reputation. The Marx Brothers quipped in response, telling them to change the name of their town to keep from hurting their movie. Despite the tepid critical response at the time, Duck Soup is now seen as a classic political farce. Film critic Danel Griffin believes that Duck Soup is "on par with other war comedies like Chaplin's The Great Dictator and Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, only slightly more unnerving in that Duck Soup doesn't seem to realize it is anything more than innocent fluff." Fellow film critic Roger Ebert believed, "The Marx Brothers created a body of work in which individual films are like slices from the whole, but Duck Soup is probably the best." British film critic Barry Norman was slightly cautious about the Marx Brothers overall, but considered Duck Soup their best and included it in his 100 best films of the 20th century. Revived interest in the film (and other 1930s comedies in general) during the 1960s was seen as dovetailing with the rebellious side of American culture in that decade. American literary critic Harold Bloom considers the end of Duck Soup one of the greatest works of American art produced in the 20th century. In 1990, Duck Soup was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Duck Soup the 29th greatest comedy film of all time. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 91% "Certified Fresh" rating