I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Truly Dreadful Film

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

For me, this is the King of Musicals. This is one of the movies I consider to be an 11. It's one of the movies that I always think might be my favorite while I'm watching it. The other is Billy Crystal's, 'Running Scared'. This has great eye candy, an excellent cast, fantastic tunes AND comedy, comedy, comedy EVERY night. Forum is highly quotable and a must see for lovers of musicals and/or comedies. After 4 decades of watching this it is still on my list of shows to see every year.

This is a film version of an early 1960s Sondheim Broadway musical with some members of the theatrical production. The story, concerning the machinations of a clever slave (Zero Mostel) manipulating his master, household, and neighbors in a plan to gain his freedom, is based on an ancient Latin comedy by Plautus. Phil Silvers as a procurer and Leon Greene as a bombastic Roman conqueror are standouts -- the latter's narcissistic introductory aria is, I think, a high point.The film has gotten mixed reviews: some don't like that many songs from the musical were left out of the movie; others have considered Lester's slapstick comic style, while vigorous, to lack depth. But the film, while not a great classic, is undoubtedly entertaining, and fans of the Classics or of things Roman will have fun seeing how the Plautine background is used.I found the Kino Lorber Blu-Ray DVD faintly disappointing: there's nothing wrong with it, but it seemed to lack the surprisingly vivid and deep images that a good Blu-Ray can bring you. Maybe they needed a better original print. I haven't seen a standard DVD version of this, though, so I don't have a basis for comparison.

While Stephen Sondheim has revealed that he prefers writing music to lyrics, I couldn't imagine anybody else writing the lyrics to the musicals he has written. Unfortunately, in the case of the movie version of the 1962 smash musical farce, most of his songs are missing and other than a few, they lack the punch of what was on stage. This is far from his best score, as it is extremely light-hearted, almost a burlesque of what Rodgers and Hart had written for the similarly themed "The Boys From Syracuse". Still, it is definitely his funniest musical which was a definite influence for "The Frogs" which he wrote a decade later but didn't get produced on Broadway until the mid 2000's. I refer to that show as "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Hades".Having seen two stage productions of "A Funny Thing Happened", I couldn't help but notice that the show simply couldn't be produced on film any other way than it has been. It is a show for a bawdy comic (hense Zero Mostel's presence as the narrator in the original), basically the type of show that funny men like Bobby Clark, Jackie Gleason and Bert Lahr might have done 20 years before. To re-create that on film looses the impact and it would have come off as too silly where while on stage an actor can ad-lib. Case in point, when I saw Whoopie Goldberg play the character of Pseudolous in the late 1990's, she ad-libbed quite a bit, to late patrons, to actors who forgot their lines, and to the whole silliness of the action on stage.Actually, Pseudelous is a man, not a free one, so to try to make something funny out of slavery is a difficult task. This is ancient Rome, however, so there's a lot to spoof. You couldn't do this about Southern slaves, but ancient times are ripe for parody. The cast is filled with funny people, including Mostel repeating his Tony winning role (which he wouldn't get to do for "Fiddler on the Roof"), Phil Silvers (who later won a Tony for playing Pseudelous in the first revival), Jack Gilford and Buster Keaton in his last film role. Just count the laughs Keaton gets for running around the seven hills of Rome seven times and giving the count to Mostel as he passes him. Gilford gets to repeat his stage part as the nervous Hysterium, and how can you not adore this gentle funny faced man? This is also of historical interest because of the fact that Mostel and Gilford had major comebacks after a period of blacklisting, sort of a public apology for the ridiculousness of the anti-red scare of a decade before. The role of Hero is played by none other than the future "Phantom of the Opera", Michael Crawford, in one of two movie musicals he did. He's quite unrecognizable in retrospective of his "Phantom" fame, but is low-key and shy when singing "Lovely" to the dizzy heroine, Annette Andre. British character actor Michael Hordern is appropriately lecherous as Psudelous's master with Patricia Jessel totally imperious as the rightly named Dominia. Unfortunately gone is Dominia's song, "That Dirty Old Man", which in retrospect is a perfect stage song yet might have been questionable if included in the film. Leon Greene as the General looks straight out of an Italian gladiator movie. The courtesans are properly tall and sexy and the element of farce is apparent throughout. Unfortunately, it's one of those movie musicals which for those who have seen it on stage has to be considered a missed opportunity. The problem is obviously not in its casting. That element is perfect. The problem is in the execution of how the film was done.The musical highlight has to be the inclusion of the show's biggest show-stopper, "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid", which just gets bawdier and bawdier as characters join in the number that initially just starts with Mostel and Hordern. So while the film is far from perfect, it does have a few highlights, but perhaps this is one hit Broadway show that just couldn't be done as written so we have to accept what we got.

It's ironic that just as Stephen Sondheim was establishing himself as both composer and lyricist on Broadway, musicals just stopped being made except on rare occasions. As a result most of Sondheim's work is sadly not filmed. In any event we don't have the musical stars on screen to do the roles justice.So in his first effort at writing both music and lyrics we're lucky indeed to have A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum on the big screen. A cut down version to be sure in terms of songs, but still a tribute to Sondheim in a fashion.The accent is more on comedy however and you cannot give enough praise to both Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford who were the only two from the Broadway cast to repeat their roles. In fact I can't conceive of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum being made without Mostel. He dominates the proceedings and that's not easy considering his main co-star is Phil Silvers. Phil Silvers was supposed to be on Broadway, but would not do the part on stage because he could not wear his glasses. Those were not just a comic prop, the man was terribly nearsighted. As a result his part was played by John Carradine. Who'd have ever thought those two would have been up for the same part?Another movie veteran the garrulous Raymond Walburn played the wandering Erronius and his part was played by the great stone face Buster Keaton in what turned out to be his farewell performance.Richard Lester the director comes in for a lot praise as well. The way he maximized the use of the screen you can hardly tell the stage origins of this show. Certainly that wild and crazy chariot race at the end could not have been done on stage. It's a great sequence even if the idea originated in the Eddie Cantor film, Roman Scandals.This movie was also the return of Zero Mostel to the screen after the blacklist. Mostel previously had done some really nice character parts, he stands out in those two Humphrey Bogart films, The Enforcer and Sirocco and was really good as Jack Palance's lapdog companion in Panic In The Streets. But when he could not get work in Hollywood, he returned to nightclubs and the theater where he obtained real stardom. One of the many Tony Awards A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum won was for Zero Mostel as Best Actor.On Broadway the show ran for 964 performances from 1962-1964 and also won a Tony for Best Musical. I haven't even described the plot because it's impossible. It revolves essentially around young Hiero, played by Michael Crawford to get the woman he loves who happens to work over at Phil Silvers's pleasure house and his family slave Zero Mostel to obtain his freedom. That's as far as I can go.As another movie icon expressed, fasten your seatbelts, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum is a wild and bumpy ride.