Start the Revolution Without Me

This review is an excerpt from my book “Killer B’s: The 237 Best Movies On Video You’ve (Probably) Never Seen,” which is available as an ebook on iBooks. If you enjoy this review, there are 236 more like it in the book (plus a whole lot more). Check it out! START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME: 1759: A Corsican Count rushes his pregnant wife through the French countryside, trying to make it to Paris before she delivers. But they are too late, and land in a little village where the only doctor is already attending to the innkeeper’s wife, who is also in the throes of labor. Both women have twin sons, and in the confusion, the infants are mixed up, one of each pair going to each pair of parents. Thirty years later, in—1789! —escalating enmity between peasants and aristocrats under the rule of Louis XVI (Griffith) is ready to ignite, and a pair of dopey, cowardly peasant twins (Sutherland and Wilder), are drafted into a rebel band. Meanwhile, the other pair of mismatched twins has been raised in the luxury of nobility. The King sends for the Corsican Brothers (guess who) to assist him in saving France from the sinister schemes of Queen Marie (Whitelaw) and her co-conspirator, the evil Duke d’Escargot (Spinetti). Arriving in Paris disguised as peasants, each set of twins is quickly mistaken for the other, and chaos ensues. Can the country boys talk some sense into Louis before the peasants revolt? Can they thwart the coup and prevent the throne from being overthrown? Don’t bet your history books on it... Wilder is wilder than ever as the wild-eyed, leather-clad sadistic twin (“I’ll join you in the chapel later,” he informs his wife. “Bring the rawhide and the honey.”) Sutherland, as a lacy, lisping fop, does his best to keep up (“One day I shall be King!” Wilder cries. “And I,” Sutherland sighs, “shall be Queen.”) Add in a virginal love interest/political pawn (Aulin) a sex-crazed Queen, a sweet old doddering codger of a King, ready to meet the peasants’ demands if it will avert a revolution, an increasingly complicated series of alliances and betrayals, conspiracies and confessions, a portentous narrator with an endless supply of overextended metaphors, and an appearance by Orson Welles, and you’ve got a fast-paced lampoon of the “intrigue in the palace” genre of action epics, circa... 1789!

Absolutely wonderful Movie! I don't even remember when I first saw it but it's perfect dry "English" type humor. I never knew Donald Sutherland could be so funny but I was falling off my seat laughing so hard. Gene Wilder is best as the aristocrat but his peasant isn't bad either. Orson Wells narrates and it has a surprising TWIST ending! I won't give it away here! I cannot wait to put this on my ipod to watch for my next flight or long drive. Thank you iTunes for giving us some DECENT options for movies.