I just saw this for the first time (I somehow missed it when it was released) last night. Admiring Gene Wilder (who I most closely associate with Silver Streak and Young Frankenstein, two top comedy favorites), I expected to laugh a lot. I didn't.
There were some very funny moments, but this was about 75% drama, with this poor Jewish rabbi having all sorts of serious calamities befall him as he tried to cross the U.S. from Philadelphia to San Francisco in 1850. One early scene has him not just being conned out of $50 trying to help two other men travel west, but as they take him along, they suddenly start beating him up--with a bloodied face of Wilder making this not at all comical--before they take his bags and clothes and throw him off the stage.
To make that scene at all funny, you needed no blood and Wilder not being visibly beaten. Maybe a quick scene where the bad guys pull a gun and say, "Now we want the rest of your money" and we suddenly see him sitting on the roadside, in his long underwear, showing the results of their robbery without the unpleasant moments where they rob him.
This is the type of thing that seems to dominate this film. Some good comedy, but lots of death-defying serious episodes that take away most of the comedic atmosphere.
Other reviewers have gone over the many inaccuracies and illogical portions of this film. They were numerous enough to obstruct my enjoyment--even though I usually overlook things like that in a comedy.
Possibly the dumbest scene was where Wilder and Ford have chased away the bad guys (killing one of them) and are now happily swimming and laughing when the remaining bad guys confront them, holding their guns on them. Intent on killing our heroes--for killing the one bad guy's brother--it was idiotic of them to let the good guys get anywhere close to their own guns, just so we could have an extended gunfight. The guns had been left on the beach and the bad guys had the drop on the good guys. The bad guys should have easily been able to grab the guns while the good guys were swimming, or shoot before they could retrieve the guns.
Too many poorly-written scenes like this and humor parsed out way too seldom kept me from finding this film worth watching. I think I'll watch Silver Streak again this weekend--it too had some intense drama, but the humor was much more frequent, allowing me to overlook the film's flaws.
There were some very funny moments, but this was about 75% drama, with this poor Jewish rabbi having all sorts of serious calamities befall him as he tried to cross the U.S. from Philadelphia to San Francisco in 1850. One early scene has him not just being conned out of $50 trying to help two other men travel west, but as they take him along, they suddenly start beating him up--with a bloodied face of Wilder making this not at all comical--before they take his bags and clothes and throw him off the stage.
To make that scene at all funny, you needed no blood and Wilder not being visibly beaten. Maybe a quick scene where the bad guys pull a gun and say, "Now we want the rest of your money" and we suddenly see him sitting on the roadside, in his long underwear, showing the results of their robbery without the unpleasant moments where they rob him.
This is the type of thing that seems to dominate this film. Some good comedy, but lots of death-defying serious episodes that take away most of the comedic atmosphere.
Other reviewers have gone over the many inaccuracies and illogical portions of this film. They were numerous enough to obstruct my enjoyment--even though I usually overlook things like that in a comedy.
Possibly the dumbest scene was where Wilder and Ford have chased away the bad guys (killing one of them) and are now happily swimming and laughing when the remaining bad guys confront them, holding their guns on them. Intent on killing our heroes--for killing the one bad guy's brother--it was idiotic of them to let the good guys get anywhere close to their own guns, just so we could have an extended gunfight. The guns had been left on the beach and the bad guys had the drop on the good guys. The bad guys should have easily been able to grab the guns while the good guys were swimming, or shoot before they could retrieve the guns.
Too many poorly-written scenes like this and humor parsed out way too seldom kept me from finding this film worth watching. I think I'll watch Silver Streak again this weekend--it too had some intense drama, but the humor was much more frequent, allowing me to overlook the film's flaws.