Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

In mid-16th Century France, a Duke brings his pregnant wife to the village doctor where she delivers twin boys--but the dotty nursemaid and the exasperated doctor mix the babies up with the newly-born twin boys of another couple, a peasant farmer and his wife, with each couple getting one correct child and one wrong. Thirty years later, the two sets of mismatched twins meet, but not before the peasants stage a revolt against bumbling King Louis XVI. Filmed entirely on location, this Bud Yorkin farce looks almost too good, too authentic for the pratfalls and slapstick nonsense which he stages on opulent castle grounds; the historic minutiae dwarfs the loosely-hinged plot, which isn't fully thought out to begin with. Worse, Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland fail to become the Abbott and Costello team the filmmakers probably hoped they'd be. Wilder sticks to his short-fuse mania and gets off some big laughs, but Sutherland's preening fop/subdued street fighter never quite emerges as a three-dimensional character. Yorkin overdoses on swashbuckling action, a handful of riffs on Dumas, and some playful girl-ogling, yet at the expense of developing these characters (even the sequence where the peasant brothers are mistakenly brought to the castle falls flat on a narrative level, with a ruse about a violin case that feels pretty fatuous). However, there are several witty verbal duals which are smartly executed, and from a technical stand-point the film is keenly-judged--from the locations to the costumes to the music. But once the viewer realizes the movie is just a series of blackout sketches, the trimmings seem rather lofty and the frenzied footwork seems much ado about little. ** from ****

To put it simply, this movie is outrageous. It flopped during its theater tenure because everyone was too high-strung over Vietnam and other period conflicts to actually understand this comedy. This fact is also touched on during the commentary by the director himself."Revolution" is in the same league as the Zucker Brothers. It's gags gain momentum as the movie unwinds, until it's whipping around during the last few scenes almost out of control, yet marvelously in control.This is a movie that has Gene Wilder at his comic peak. He's pre-Wonka and pre-"FrankenSTEEN" here, and hasn't found temperance in his angry hysteria. I've watched this movie close to 15 times, and I can't handle myself when Wilder is galloping around with his stuffed falcon. And the gags in his marriage! "Bring the leather and the honey ... " (His character's wife looks at the camera with a look of worry).Donald Sutherland is reserved, but he's not well known for his comedy. Yet he has excellent moments, especially in strangling adversaries on the dock with one hand! "...and I shall be the Queeeeen!" The funniest pieces here are actually the lines. Read the quotes! Oh my, a gold mine!

Funny film features Gene Wilder in one of his very best performances. He and Donald Sutherland score as both sets of identical twins but no one can match the comedic intensity Wilder brings to the role of the pompous psycho with the dead stuffed hawk on his arm. It's a great gag and ranks with his best work -The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles- and even some of the film performances of Peter Sellers -Dr. Strangelove, his Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series. It's a good time!

Just thinking of the "bits" in this masterpiece, sends me into hysterics. The dead hawk on Gene Wilder's arm; (before or after M. Python's dead parrot bit?), the "it's a pleasure doing business with you" bit; when they open a dungeon door to release a prisoner who has been chained to a wall for twenty years, and his first words to the jailer is, "That's a nice suit. Did you just buy it?" (It's eighteenth century France). All done in low key, straight faced, English style. It looks like the only advice Bud Yorkin the director gave this great cast was, "Forget this is a comedy. Act like it's a regular Louis VXI historical presentation. It worked like a charm. The Duke d'Escargot is played by Victor Spinetti, one of my favorite comedians, who for some reason did not reach the international fame I think he deserved. I start laughing even before he says something, and you know when he does say something it will be a piece of nonsense that you'll end up believing, because he says it with such sincerity you just gotta believe the guy. And the rest of the cast.Gene Wilder, Donald Sutherland, Billie Whitelaw, Hugh Griffith, Murray Melvin. Even I could be a Fellini with these "heavy hitters".