A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Rating

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

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A wily slave must unite a virgin courtesan and his young smitten master to earn his freedom.

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Alternative Titles

Um Escravo das Arábias em Roma, Em Roma... era assim, Le Forum en folie

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Song and dance Crude humor and satire songs, musical, singing, comedy or funny singing, musical, songs, tune or dancing western, cowboy, outlaw, wild or guns band, songs, concert, musician or lyrics comedy, funny, humor, hilarious or jokes Show All…

Popular reviews

How long do you need to have watched a film to claim you've seen it? I really don't know, but I turned this off half way though because I had taken a rather instanteous dislike for it--which only got worse.

Reasons I wanted to watch this:
I love Stephen Sondheim, and this is one I only know one song from.

I have greatly enjoyed Zero Mostel in Broadway cast albums and on screen.

It's Buster Keaton's last film.

Reason's I hated it:

Only 5 out of 14 Sondheim songs are in the film! (I looked it up.) What the heck? His lyrics are always amazing! ARGH

Women are shrews, prostitutes, or virgin prostitutes...and also slaves. Plus, the filming/editing is extremely objectifying.

Took too long for Keaton to arrive because I already hated it by then.

I did not find it funny.
Buster Keaton thirst watches are rough
"I didn't like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To the Forum at all."

"I find Kevin Hart's stand up to be really funny."

-multiple people in my theater class.

You know, I kind of just wanted to shoot myself reading some of the discussion for this movie. There's people that find humor in some stupid bullshit. Then again, this movie is stupid bullshit to some folks.

Well I found it to be enjoyable. Zero Mostel is a fun actor to behold, and the rest of this cast really ham up to the stock characters of the Roman comedies they are based on.

Glad that this was homework.
I was wondering while watching this, how many centuries must pass before slavery can be the subject of farce? With little alteration and the changing of names and proper nouns, this could be remade as "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Jackson Square" and set in 1850s New Orleans — a trickster slave scheming to buy his freedom, cat houses on Bourbon Street, a naive planter's son, jokes about lashing, a new shipment of women sold in the market for sex and breeding stock.

Clearly, no amount of witty Sondheim lyrics and broad slapstick could save that remake from being anything but massively offensive. 170 years is not enough time. A Funny Thing is funny. So how much time must pass? Comedy tomorrow. Tragedy tonight.
It was amusing to see the cast being silly in this setting, Ancient Rome, and it definitely comes across as an old school comedy. The pace is great though; it zips along from one bit or line to another at breakneck speed with that free spirit of the 1960's, so even though only some of it worked for me, I was reasonably entertained. It seemed a little bit like a guilty pleasure because the treatment of women is pretty poor, especially early on. We see all the stereotypes here – the shrewish wife, the buxom prostitutes, the innocent virgin, the exoticized Asian and African-American dancers, and the less attractive but horny one. There's a potion concocted for virility, and a…
Cringeworthy, boring, unfunny, and sexeist - even by 60's standards.

I can't believe the stage musical won the Tony for Best Musical, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Book, Best Producer ( musical ),and Best Director.

I also can't believe it's been revived multiple times, and as recently as 2004 in London, and the 1996 Broadway revival received FOUR Tony noms, including Best Revival, Director, Featured Actor, and WON for Best Actor ( but then again, the lead was Nathan Lane ... he farts and Tony's are blown away )

The only logical explanation is that everyone judging the Tony's were on crack.

I look at the LB ratings, and I shudder.
Answers the age-old question: How much comedic mileage can you get out of dropping potted plants on people?
lesson: don't cut sondheim songs
What a shame. Director Richard Lester tries to continue with the free-and-loose feeling that made A Hard Day's Night such a success, but Zero Mostel and Phil Silvers aren't The Beatles, and this ancient Roman musical sex comedy is frightfully dull throughout. Musicals can often be cheesy, or overly theatrical, but they are very rarely as flat and boring as this. A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum swings and misses time and again with uninteresting songs and poorly-written jokes.

The only thing that saves the film from being an outright disaster is some nicely-done physical comedy that seems straight out of a classic Buster Keaton film (and for good reason, since an aging Keaton stars in…
The stage version of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM is an absolute delight. It is a form of commedia del'arte with improvised performances woven into sketch scenes, pantomime, and foolish jokes, and it is also a spoof that works on multiple levels. Not only does it have fun with the musical theater format, it also makes sly (and not so sly) references to typical theatergoing audiences ... reassuring those who are generally bored by "high-minded Art" that they need not worry since (as the opening song clearly reassures) "And there's a happy ending of course!"

The movie version of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM is a revisionist version…
A lot of people around these parts complain there's none of the musical numbers from the original. Honestly, though, I could give less of a damn. It's very clear Lester doesn't take this material too seriously, and so he gives it a very aloof touch by hilariously butchering Sondheim's book to only a few corny numbers. (Of course "Comedy Tonight," but also a blatantly kitschy romance number between Mike Crawford [the poor, hapless young'un from The Knack and How I Won the War] and his courtesan, as well as a juicy number featuring a cross-dressing Jack Gilford falling in love with Zero Mostel.)

My concern with the film lies with its hokum sense of humor (too much borrowing from the…
A slapstick heavy musical farce starring Zero Mostel and Phil Silvers, set in Ancient Rome and with Buster Keaton in his final screen appearance? I'm fully on board with that.

Bawdy, frantically paced and relentlessly fun, it may not exactly
hold together as a whole and certainly falls flat on more than one occasion, but there's some really great stuff here. Physical comedy will never get old, it never fails to raise a smile when done right and with Keaton on board—one of the greatest slapstick comics, this was bound to be a success. He was 70 years old and terminally ill with cancer at the time yet still able to do his own stunts, that's pretty amazing. Mostel really…