A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Reviews

My biggest problem with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is that half of the musical’s songs got jettisoned leaving the film adaptation as a movie musical that’s a little shy about it, so it masquerades as a bawdy burlesque instead. Essentially a chance for star Zero Mostel to mug the camera for two hours with help with from Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford, and Buster Keaton, in his final film, A Funny Thing is an enjoyable mess of a movie. If vaudeville had been a thing in ancient Greece, complete with Borscht belt humor, it would’ve looked something like this.

Little attention is paid to historical accuracy, and why would it, when the story boils down to an anachronistic farce about a slave trying to earn his freedom by helping his hapless master win the girl. Once again, Michael Crawford plays the neurotic virgin seemingly downplaying his handsome looks for sexual inadequacy, and he generates a hilarious straight man/clown chemistry with Mostel. Their lunacy of a pact and its varied schemes lay the foundation for a live-action cartoon in which physical feats turn everyone into rubber, identities become mistaken, and, of course, cross-dressing must occur.

If this sounds like its overburdened with plot and incident, well it very much is. A Funny Thing does tend to wander off and takes too long between musical sequences. You half forget you’re watching one when suddenly one blunders in and reminds you that this was originally conceived as a musical farce. The cast is game, especially Mostel, Silvers, Gilford, and Keaton bringing their A game, but the rest of the film can be a bit like spinning your wheels in the mud. It eventually gets out of the trap, but it can take a while to move.