A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM

When I was about -5 years old, my parents and sister lived in Stuttgart, Germany. While there, my mom directed and my dad starred in a stage production of the musical that this movie is based on. My dad played Pseudolus and, to this day, he can still recite all of his lines. I preface this "review" with that because my parents are kind of disappointed with the film version. For one thing, most of the songs were taken out. That bothers me, too. Especially because my favorite character is Hero and all but one of his songs were cut. The resulting film is basically like a play adaptation of the musical. Only six of Sondheim's funny songs remain, and they come in so sporadically that I found myself not even noticing them so much. This isn't so good to say about a musical. However, that being said, I found the movie to be amusing and the actors were great. I didn't even find the unnecessary chariot race going on at the end to be much of a problem. But when Hero told Pseudolus that he would give him his freedom if the slave helped him get the girl (Philia), I was disappointed because I knew that the song "Free" was supposed to be there. And I would've loved to hear Michael Crawford and Zero Mostel sing it together. Rent it for a laugh, not for songs. 10/15/09

"She's a virgin!" "Is that good?"