SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

moonspinner55 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 ****

ino_mart I first saw this movie when I was somewhere between 12 and 15 years old. I liked the movie in that time and I had to laugh with the gimmicks. I saw it multiple times.Today I saw this movie again, but instead of 15 years before, I now disliked the movie. I could not laugh with any joke nor situation.What I disliked the most now is that it is not edited very well. It seems that the movie stops for a few milliseconds between many shot and scenes.I now find that the humor is funny when you are a child or teenager, but not when you are an adult.There are also some "real" mistakes in the movie. Of course it is a comic movie and most of it is fictitious. However there are some things that are not correct historically, such as Christinan, the princess of Belgium and its army. In 1786 Belgium did not exist yet, it was a part of the "United states of the Netherlands". Belgium was only founded in 1830. Before 1830 it was ruled by many other authorities (Netherlands, France, Germans, Spain, Rome, ...).

Elswet Two sets of twins are mis-matched at birth. One set belongs to a royal family, and one set belongs to a peasant couple. Just as things begin to get interesting for the royal brothers, the peasant brothers trade places with them. The peasant brothers join the revolution while their idiot twins sit around eating and failing to notice the French Revolution which is going on all around them. This work has heart yet never takes itself too seriously, making for a level of enjoyable chaos suitable for an entertaining 91 minutes. Unfortunately, this movie died upon release only to become a Rocky Horror Picture Show of its own among the college crowd.For some reason, this movie reminds me of Cheech and Chong's the Corsican Brothers. I can't help but associate the two, since they do have the same feeling. Gene Wilder turns in his usual wonderful performance and Donald Sutherland actually manages to carry off the comedy. The plot is littered with small holes, but the story is rather irrelevant. This work is more for the comedic effect than anything else, and it holds up well throughout. That having been said, let me also point out that this movie was nominated for best story written for the screen by the Writers Guild.This work is great fun to watch and a MUST SEE for any Gene Wilder fan! He plays two parts and therefore gets loads of screen time.It rates a 7.8/10 from...the Fiend :.

Fhearghuis "All the Castles...all the chapels, All the Rocks, the stones, the trees, the flowers, the mud, the dirt.... And I SHALL BE QUEEN"This movie is hilarious....I saw it on TV a LOOONG time ago, and then I saw it on DVD and bought it, now my sisters and I can't get enough of it....it's classic...."three feet of Persian rug..." haha...."later that night, 1789"....this movie made "pleasure their business" and it's a pleasure watching it.....Whatever...and we can't stop quoting this movie...."I thought it was a costume ball"It's a great movie....some people don't know what funny is when it hits them in the face...