User Reviews

Mel Brooks' blackout sketches, mostly involving cave men, ancient Rome, the Inquisition, and the French Revolution, with a lot of other stuff thrown in. The various shreds are so impulsively but personally patched together that one wonders how he could have gotten such a cast, mostly familiar old timers.

The style of the humor isn't what anyone would call fresh. A shot of a street in ancient Rome has a black guy walking along with a boombox against his ear. Ha ha. Facing the guillotine, Brooks is asked if he has any last requests. "Yes -- NOVACAINE!" "It hasn't been invented yet." "I'll wait!" And Brooks from time to time glances at the camera and makes comments on the shenanigans.

A lot of the humor is Jewish. During a parody of Esther Williams' movies we not only see seven girls in bathing suits (and caps) slowly emerge from the pool wearing sparklers on their heads, but as they go up and up we see that they're standing on a menorah. A drowning man shouts and the underwater bubble of his breath rises to the surface and pops and it says, "Oy, gewalt!" Maybe I should quit because otherwise I'll give away all the gags and some of them depend on the principle of fundamental surprise. Many of them also depend on vulgarity, in more than one language. It's about as politically correct as you can get. I don't know that even in a good-natured comedy that skewers politicians, racism, Judaism, Hollywood, and Holy Mother Church you could get away with calling someone a "fag" today. Or how about this. Gregory Hines' intact heterosexuality is revealed and someone shouts, "The jig is up!" "And gone," exclaims Hines, diving out the window.

For me the scene that works best is the one in which Brooks is Louis XVI, shooting down peasants as they are flung through the air like clay pigeons. He's in a ridiculous "King" costume and wears a villainous black mustache and a beauty spot. Strolling through the garden, he gooses Marie Antoinette, winks at the camera and says, "It's good to be da king." And when he's forcing a beautiful blond virgin to meet him later that night, in order to save her imprisoned father, he adopts this smug, conspiratorial tone as he tells her, "You do it. You KNOW you do it. You WANNA do it. We all do it." And he smiles wickedly at us and reminds us again that, "It's good to be da king." I said this was a good-natured comedy and what I mean is that it doesn't depend in any way on anger. There isn't even an undertone of nastiness. We see a sketch from what we used to call "coming attractions" -- "Hitler on Ice" -- and Hitler performs gracefully. The humor lies in the absurdity of the concept. Any value judgments about the subject are taken for granted.

Some of it looks quite a bit like Woody Allen, but it may be a case of independent invention. What it reminds me of at times are the "Road" films of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Now THAT'S good-natured comedy, although Brooks idea of fun is of course more urban, if not more urbane.

The bloated pompous baritone of Orson Welles introduces each new segment with portentous comments -- "The first weapon was the spear." Welles, like Brooks, is obviously kidding around too. Everybody is kidding around and the result is quite a lot of fun, despite the occasional wince.

The "Part I" in the title of the film was kind of an inside joke about sequels and film series. After all, if they have a "Rocky II," "Rocky III," "Rocky IV," "Rocky V," etc., how come there was never a "Rocky I?" Mel Brooks delivers a critique of today's religion and politics but with characters and situations set ages ago. After all, the proverbial question set by characters from thousands of years ago, "But what about the poor?" The "F Word" reply given in unison by the chorus of ancient politicians was really a social commentary on contemporary politics. Mel Brooks' musical extravaganza on "The Inquisition" was not just a commentary of a dark, violent, regrettable page of history on the Catholic Church, but a commentary on a few aspects of today's religious issues. Some people in the audience may have felt that some of the religious humor was too disrespectful, with characters in the scenes like Moses, Jesus, priests, nuns, etc. The rule of thumb on that is that you can have Biblical and religious characters in your humor, as long as you're making fun with them, rather than at them. After all, when was the last time you thought about God? Anytime people start talking and thinking about religion, their beliefs or disbeliefs, it's good. It's thought provoking. It would be too "in your face" to use contemporary public figures to make commentary like that. After all, this is a Mel Brooks motion picture for the movie theater where you pay for a ticket and expect quality -- not an episode of "Saturday Night Live" that keeps recycling old jokes with new faces. That's why it's good taste to make your comedic critique with characters and situations set hundreds or thousands of years ago as Mel Brooks did in the first place. "The History Of The World -- Part I" is a delightful comedy. If you haven't seen it yet, it's worth your while.

Parodying creation, the caveman film, the biblical epic, the crusades and the French Revolution, Mel Brooks got most of it right. There are only a few groaners, a few eye raisers and many genuine laughs, a few of them worthy of a Danny Thomas spit take.

Utilizing humor styles perfected the year earlier with "Airplane!" while utilizing his familiar style of delicious bad taste, Brooks uses much of his regular crew of funny people. With dry narration by Orson Welles, Brooks goes all out to satirize the genre of phony Hollywood history. The highlights are the Roman Empire sequence with a delightfully hysterical performance by Madeline Kahn as an unnamed Roman empress, with a deliberately grotesque performance by Dom De Luise as the Emperor. Historical timing would show it as Tiberius as the scene moved to Judea on the night of the last supper. Ironically, John Hurt who played Caligula in TV's "I Claudius" plays Jesus in a cameo.

The inquisition sequence is a parody just like "Springtime For Hitler" to show the atrocities against the Jewish population. It is semi- successful as long as you realize the point Brooks was making and the real history behind it.

Some great art direction makes the French Revolution sequence better than it actually is although the cameos by several familiar faces is also of help. With Cloris Leachman standing out as the Dickens character Madam De Farce, that segment is raised a notch, just as the Roman Empire sequence was with its cameo by Bea Arthur.

As for the coming attractions at the end, it now seems pointless, not only because there never was a sequel, but because it really isn't funny. So a in all a mixed bag, but middle of the road Brooks is certainly better than no Brooks.

I don't think there's too much of a disagreement over the fact that Mel Brooks is an incredibly funny and gifted entertainer. Is "History of the World: Part 1" his funniest film? Probably--almost certainly--not. But the laughs it does elicit are legitimate enough for me to still basically enjoy it every time I watch.

For a very basic overview, "World: Part 1" is Brooks (writer, director, and playing multiple acting roles) riffing on a bunch of historical time periods: Stone Age, Old Testament, Roman Empire, Inquisition, & French Revolution, poking fun at those people and their times in the parodic way that only Brooks can cultivate.

Truth be told, there's quite a bit of stuff in this film that flat out doesn't work. For as much of a comedic genius as I consider Brooks to be, I'm not sure why he so often goes "lowest common denominator" here with many of the jokes/gags. Some of the humor also likely won't "play" all that well in more current politically-correct times. In those ways, "World: Part 1" will never be a top-tier (Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, etc.) Brooks comedy.

However, there are enough truly laugh-out-loud moments to make this a baseline fun viewing, such as:

-The Inquisition song/dance number (probably the highlight of the whole piece).

-The Moses skit with the "15--10 Commandments!"

-Pretty much all the material in the Roman Empire section. The acting and comedic talents of Brooks, Gregory Hines, Dom DeLuise, and Madeline Kahn really shine.

I doubt I'll ever grade "History of the World: Part 1" much higher than 7/10 stars--but also probably never much lower, either. Considering all the sections/jokes that don't work, those dry moments are balanced out by some material that will stand the test of comedy time.

A pity that a director like Mel Brooks, responsible for such classics like "The Producer", the one-two 1974 punch of "Young Frankenstein" and "Blading Saddles", and the less successful but still entertaining "High Anxiety" fell flat on his face with this clunker.

While it starts out with the promising Orson Welles voice-over (spoofing his own "War of the Worlds" narration as a nifty in-joke) in the first segment (which also spoofs the ape men sequence from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"), the rest quickly plummets in one un-funny after un-funny succession.

Sid Caesar gives all he has for his short bit as the lead caveman (and granted, the entry works). Moses fails to deliver and whatever comic intent there is shatters just like his extra table of commandments. Only the Bea Arthur scene works in the Roman Empire segment -- even Madeline Kahn's presence can't save what is a badly written part -- and here the movie completely sinks into incoherence with unrelated "funny" scenes added as supposed hilarity, for example, when a man carries a very dated boom box and listens to "Funkytown". The Last Supper sequence is fairly descent and somewhat brings back "History..." a little luster, but the Spanish Inquisition, a segment obviously intended as a nod to Hollywood musicals from the 1930s, is quite arguably the worst sketch in the entire movie. The French Revolution begins well, bringing Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, and Andreas Katsoulas, all Brooks veterans, back on film in small but memorable parts, but not long after this segment begins that it goes down, down under and never bothers to recover itself.

The fact that Mel Brooks also decided to play five roles here makes it the more irritating. One can only guess he did so due to his own star power (or maybe he believed he could do an Alec Guiness). His entry as the King in the last sequence is so cringe-inducing ["It's good to be the king!"] that it's a relief when that bad joke is over and THE END appears on the horizon with a title montage reminiscent of the all-caps title LAND OF THE GIANTS.

I personally am glad of his success with his own revival of "The Producers." His recent appearance at the season finale of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" only cements his reputation even more as he spoofs his revival using Larry David, of all people as the lead, in order for it to flop. It only furthers to show he can make a fantastically funny visual story (or appear in one) when he chooses to, but this movie is only for die-hard fans.