Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not just hilarious, but really inventive, too, 3 Mar 2007
A 'cult classic' is what we're talking about here. At the time, and even now, some just won't get it.
It is interesting that Airplane!, which came before, and The Naked Gun, which followed, were huge successes and this is probably because they were more disciplined parodies of highly recognisable genres. Here, though, as in The Kentucky Fried Movie where they began, the team just let ideas run wild. Although more surreal, this is no less funny and at times is probably the best work they've done.
The songs are sublime, from a razor-sharp Beach Boys spoof to a reworded Are You Lonesome Tonight? turned into an advertising jingle. The dialogue sparkles, the jokes are terrific and the fact that Val Kilmer is taking it so seriously (he always does - and this actually makes the film funnier now that he is so well-known) just adds to the brilliance.
Who can forget the city map turning into a Pac-Man game, the giant pigeon statue or the scene with Peter Cushing, filmed entirely backwards - a scene which was ripped off by an advertising campaign for Tennants Pilsner which must have lasted a decade?
Of course, today many of the targets sent up will perhaps have been forgotten. Who now remembers Midnight Express, The Blue Lagoon, any number of cheesy Elvis, World War II and Cold War movies...perhaps even Pac Man itself?
The fact that it's so brimming with ideas will just be too much for some viewers, like a cake that's too rich. Others will be in comedy heaven.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Soooooooooooo funny!!!, 17 Nov 2002
Any one who likes comedy has to get this, it is one of the funniest spoof comedys ever! Ok, so it might be a bit old now, but one you start watching it, you won't stop laughing.
It is one of the rare comedy films which continues to churn out the gags during the film, and never lets up.
The cast is brilliant, headed by the excellent Val Kilmer, and the charecters are very good too, especially 'de ja vous', a member of the french resistance, who's first line upon meeting people is 'have we not met before'.
This film has been my favorite since I was very young, and it still looks brilliant every time i watch it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Greatest Comedy of All Time!, 3 Aug 2002
The first time I saw this film was in a South African cinema in 1984 upon its initial release. I was 9 years old and laughed so much that I had to be excused to the bathroom midway through. This has never happened before or since I might add. As soon as I'd finished watching the film I wanted to see it again. I dragged all of my friends to go and see it - and each of them wanted to go and see it again too! In total we went to see this film 7 times at the cinema on its initial release, each time finding new gags to chuckle at.Now, roll on 18 years and I've finally found this film on VHS. Is it still as funny as it was in 1984? Well, I suppose that I'm a little more discerning about comedy these days, but this film is just so full of gags that I was forced to laugh all the way through. I have not seen another comedy that manages to cram so much funny stuff into such a short space of time. And because the directors weren't satisfied with simply filling the length of the film with great gags, they also layered them deep into most scenes. So at any one time you will have a main foreground gag going on and one or more gags happening somewhere in the background that you'll probably only notice on the third of fourth viewing! It's full of highly memorable imagery and brilliant comic performances throughout and is the definitive Zucker & Abrahams classic.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Which language? which sub-titles?
Audio: English, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish.
Sub-titles: English for the hearing impaired, English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech,...
Read more
Published 7 months ago by C. X. Linton-Willoughby
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