Takeshi-K If you like a liberal display of toilet humor and sexual innuendo in a silly campy comedy film, this is the movie for you. What makes Mel Brooks' films unique is a sense of good clean fun. In the world of Brooksian comedy, the good are heroic and the nasty get whats coming to them. Brooks pitches popular low brow comedy to the masses and hits every time. This movie is structured around certain famous periods in history starting with caveman days moving on to biblical times, then ancient rome and so on until ending in the 17th century with the rule of King Louis of France.Don't take it seriously and you will be sure to enjoy it.

Mr-Fusion "History of the World: Part I" is a shocking example of a 90-minute series of gags that land with a dull thud. This is coming from a Mel Brooks fan, which is the reason for the shock. Also, the disappointment. It started out with promise (Brooks and the fift- . . . ten commandments, Bea Arthur in the unemployment office but then the Ancient Rome segment happens and things grind to a halt. And then never pick back up, even after we get out of Rome. It's not every day you see the comedic talents of Dom Deluise squandered (same thing happened with "Smokey and the Bandit II").This was bad.

kajzergagi This is one of the best comedies I ever saw!!! First time I watch this when I was 8 year old kid,and since then I watch this movie multiple times!Highly recommended this movie to everybody!Great acting,great humor,great directing! If u didn't see this film do this as soon as you can and you will see what you are missing for all of this years,and if you are already see this film do yourself a favor and watch it once more!!! I will not tell you whats going on in the movie,you will enjoy more if you don't know what will happen here!I will only tell you that this film begin in prehistoric age and finish with king Louis XVI! P.S.Sorry if I made some grammatical mistakes,English is not my native language!!!

jzappa Comic perspective is usually determined in the opening moments of a funny movie, establishing the rules of the new world and hooking the audience. Well, History of the World Part I begins with cavemen waking up and humping air for what feels like a solid 2 minutes. This is his Dawn of Man segment, a vague parody of Kubrick's 2001, before he moves on to The Stone Age during which the first art critic is sent up, and then mocks Moses in an Old Testament sketch, which is essentially a single joke that we fade into and out of that quickly. Where Brooks really goes to town is during The Roman Empire. He stars as a "stand-up philosopher" who, along with a black slave played by Gregory Hines and a defiant vestal virgin, brings pandemonium to the court of the extraordinarily hilarious Emperor Nero, in one of Dom DeLuise's most memorable performances, and Madeleine Kahn, his nymphomaniac empress.We're actually surprised when the movie moves on, because it seems to have decided to develop some semblance of a story there, unlike its preceding episodes. But it does, and Brooks again takes center stage as Torquemada, who celebrates his ecstatic pleasure in torturing Jews who reject Christianity in a Busby Berkeley tableau abounding with melody, singing, and a water ballet. Oh, and a funny little aside elucidates some unanswered questions about how Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Last Supper. Ultimately, Harvey Korman steals the spotlight from Brooks, as per usual, in an absurd caricature of The French Revolution. Korman plays foppish nobleman Count De Monet, who turns up with a cunning plot to save King Louis XVI from death at the hands of the mob by switching the King's lowly doppelganger on the crucial occasion.This is an incoherent, disorderly, sometimes awkward romp by one of the most talented comic filmmakers, who never seems to have a clear idea of the underlying principle of his seventh film escapade, so there's no assertive narrative incentive to bear it along. His historical context doesn't have any method or perspective. It's basically just an assembly line for whatever jokes he can sling on it. What is this off-the-wall grab bag? Is it a lampoon of old Biblical, Roman and French historical epics? From time to time. Is it a never-to-be-repeated, comedy vaudeville seizure? Now and then. Is it a send-up trained at haughty foils? Every so often. But generally it's in essence simply valuable sets standing there expecting Brooks to do something comical before them.Synchronously with Woody Allen, Brooks has helped sustain the comedy genre in contemporary films. As Allen has turned increasingly sophisticated and contemplative, Brooks has gotten increasingly campy and preposterous, the politically incorrect auteur and effortless ham actor's rudimentary oomph let loose flat out with this outrageous 1981 package picture, in which---rather than taking razor-sharp bites out of status quo mythologies and nostalgic legends as he did with his crowning achievements Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein---he indulges in our incessant need for mocking the sort of unconsciously class-based theories of manners and good form that inadvertently made burlesque all the rage in its puritan heyday. As in all movies by the ambitious Brooks, there are dull patches where the farce and the gags just don't work. But hit-or-miss is his style, so when he does hit, he hits the bullseye. Or at least somewhere in the red or yellow.