Mel Brooks's 1981, three-part comedy--set in the Stone Age, the Roman Empire, and the French Revolution--is pure guilty pleasure. Narrated by Orson Welles and featuring a lot of famous faces in guest appearances (beyond the official cast), the film opens well with Sid Caesar playing a caveman, then moves along to the unlikely but somehow hilarious juxtaposition of Caesar's soldiers (the other Caesar, not Sid) with pot humor, and ends on a dumb-funny note in the French bloodbath. This is a take-it-or-leave-it movie, and it works best if you're in a take-it-or-leave-it mood. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Great Mel Brooks Classic:
Great Mel Brooks Classic. Relive those forgotten scenes, find out where those quotable quotes originated. Ah Ha, that's where that saying came from, Hilarious!
Fantastically Funny Movie:
I love this movie! When this movie came out I was just a kid. It was funny then, and it's just as funny now. You can't go wrong with this one!
Might be a good way to teach history to the disinterested?:
Slap-stick and irreverent satire start here at the stone age
and go on through to the French revolution, with stops at Moses and the Roman Empire.
The cart in the French market place selling rats as the meat of the day
really points out what starvation can mean.
I just saw a documentary on the French revolution that says the money sent
to the American revolution was responsible for the economic bad times in France that ended in the French revolution.
The depiction of the... more info
Classic Mel Brooks:
My VHS tape wore out, couldn't wait to get this! Great cast, even Henny Youngman in a great quick scene. Madeline Kahn is perfect as Empress Nympho, and "it's good to be the King"! Second only to Blazing Saddles for me!