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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
"Something familiar, something peculiar,
something for everyone: a comedy tonight!" Those words from the opening
song pretty much describe the menu in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way
to the Forum, a frantic adaptation of the stage musical by Larry
Gelbart and Burt Shevelove. The wild story, set in ancient Rome,
follows a slave named Pseudolus (Zero Mostel, snorting and gibbering)
as he tries to extricate himself from an increasingly farcical
situation; Mostel and a bevy of inspired clowns, including Phil
Silvers, Jack Gilford, and Buster Keaton, keep the slapstick and the
patter perking. The cast also includes the young Michael Crawford as a
love-struck innocent. This project landed in the lap of Richard Lester,
then one of the hottest directors in the world after his success with
the Beatles' films. Lester telescoped the material through his own
joke-a-second sensibility, and also ripped out some of the songs from
Stephen Sondheim's Broadway score. The result is a pixilated romp and
very close to the vaudeville spirit suggested by the title--though
anyone with a low tolerance for Zero Mostel's overbearing buffoonery
may be in trouble. Oddly enough, amidst all the frenzy, Lester creates
a grungy, earthy Rome that seems closer to the real thing than
countless respectable historical films on the subject. --Robert Horton
