Mel Brooks delivers funny movies. 'The Producers', 'Blazing Saddles' and for me especially 'Young Frankenstein' belong the funniest I have seen. They told a story from tart to finish and the jokes found their way into that story. 'History of the World: Part I' is again funny, but it is very flawed as well. This movie does not tell a story with gags in it, it tells gags with a couple of stories around it.
Mel Brooks seems to have chosen a couple of events in our history, at random, as long as his jokes would fit there. We start with the dawn of men, the stone age and a story around the ten commandments. These segments are not that long and I found them hilarious. The narrator, Orson Welles, explains us how things started back then, things like singing and painting. It is the kind of humor that requires a certain taste, but if you like it Mel Brooks is as good as it gets. Most of the time.
We continue with longer segments including one in the Roman Empire which starts great but after a while it overstays its welcome, a musical number dealing with the Spanish Inquisition that has the same problem, and one during the French Revolution that is not that funny at all. Especially in these sequences we see how Brooks has the idea of a funny gag, puts a story around it without really doing something with both the idea of the gag and the story. It is like watching Jim Carrey doing funny faces without a reason for doing that. His funny face can be funny when it is serving something, it is not simply funny on its own.
Near the end Brooks finds his way again and shows us what we could expect in Part II. I laughed like I did in the first half of the movie and that gave me the feeling the movie is funnier and better than it actually is. Fans of the genre will enjoy this enough, there is some real Mel Brooks magic here, but if you are still finding out whether you like this or not I would start somewhere else. 'Young Frankenstein' would be a nice choice.
Mel Brooks seems to have chosen a couple of events in our history, at random, as long as his jokes would fit there. We start with the dawn of men, the stone age and a story around the ten commandments. These segments are not that long and I found them hilarious. The narrator, Orson Welles, explains us how things started back then, things like singing and painting. It is the kind of humor that requires a certain taste, but if you like it Mel Brooks is as good as it gets. Most of the time.
We continue with longer segments including one in the Roman Empire which starts great but after a while it overstays its welcome, a musical number dealing with the Spanish Inquisition that has the same problem, and one during the French Revolution that is not that funny at all. Especially in these sequences we see how Brooks has the idea of a funny gag, puts a story around it without really doing something with both the idea of the gag and the story. It is like watching Jim Carrey doing funny faces without a reason for doing that. His funny face can be funny when it is serving something, it is not simply funny on its own.
Near the end Brooks finds his way again and shows us what we could expect in Part II. I laughed like I did in the first half of the movie and that gave me the feeling the movie is funnier and better than it actually is. Fans of the genre will enjoy this enough, there is some real Mel Brooks magic here, but if you are still finding out whether you like this or not I would start somewhere else. 'Young Frankenstein' would be a nice choice.