Anytime the genre listed for a movie is comedy/history, I will watch it, and hopefully I will be as pleased with the outcome as I was when I watched Bud Yorkin's 1970 feature Start the Revolution Without Me. Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland band together in an attempt to explain the French Revolution through a zany switched-at- birth tale. In this telling, the two principles are switched at birth with another set of twins and are responsible for beginning and ending the French Revolution. The pages of history have never been more fun to turn as they were in Start the Revolution Without Me. On the evening, before the French Revolution began, two sets of twins were born in the same house, to two completely different families. One aristocratic family stopped at the home of the doctor because they couldn't make it to their destination. Inside the home, the doctor was delivering a set of babies of a poor peasant family. In a hilarious mishap, the doctor and his team mismatched the babies before returning them to their families. Years later, we see the first set of mismatched twins as members of the resistance, sort of, stealing their way through existence. The other set of twins, the Corsican brothers, French royalty. When the King wishes to meet with the Corsican brothers, they oblige, passing through the area the peasants are inhabiting in that moment. When unrest breaks out, the Corsican brothers, disguised as peasants, are mistaken for the real peasant brothers and taken as prisoners, whereas the real peasants are taken to the king. The remainder of the movie unfolds as history does around the two sets of brothers both trying to figure out why they are in the situation they're in and how to get out of it. The rest, as they say, is history.Well hello, Orson Welles! Opening the film as a narrator for the historical adaptation being told, Welles was a surprise and treat for the film. I've seen Gene Wilder, well, in everything he's ever been in, so I knew he could do comedic acting; I was impressed and surprised to see Donald Sutherland in a comedic role. I am not as well-versed with his filmography to know if he has done comedic roles well, but he was wonderful in Start the Revolution Without Me. I can't imagine the level of difficulty for an actor to play two opposite roles in a film. Bud Yorkin's film shows what talent Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland have that they can do both roles as well as the other. Neither set of twins faltered in this piece, as they often do in other films, and that fact can only be attributed to the caliber of actors involved. It was a treat to see Gene Wilder fencing so much in this movie! As a fan of Wilder's, I've read in his memoir that he taught fencing in college and was adept at the sport. It's always fun to see him fencing in movies and to watch his unique skill on screen. I always figuratively hold my breath through these movies with a mistaken identity theme running through them, because they depend so much upon the reveal of identities. A rushed reveal can really dampen the entire film in a movie like this; fortunately, Start the Revolution Without Me did not fall victim to the rushed identity reveal, and held well until the end. The reveal was just as fun as the film, leaving viewers happy they invested the time into this 1970 gem.Gene Wilder was wonderful in another role in which he shared the lead. Wilder rose to leads incredibly quickly, considering this was only his third film. Of course, Wilder is more well known for his collaborative efforts throughout his career, but his overlooked movies are often my favorite, Start the Revolution Without Me being one of them. It is great to see what he can do all on his own in a film like this. Wilder never disappoints, and neither does his performance in Start the Revolution Without Me.

In mid-16th Century France, a Duke brings his pregnant wife to the village doctor where she delivers twin boys--but the dotty nursemaid and the exasperated doctor mix the babies up with the newly-born twin boys of another couple, a peasant farmer and his wife, with each couple getting one correct child and one wrong. Thirty years later, the two sets of mismatched twins meet, but not before the peasants stage a revolt against bumbling King Louis XVI. Filmed entirely on location, this Bud Yorkin farce looks almost too good, too authentic for the pratfalls and slapstick nonsense which he stages on opulent castle grounds; the historic minutiae dwarfs the loosely-hinged plot, which isn't fully thought out to begin with. Worse, Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland fail to become the Abbott and Costello team the filmmakers probably hoped they'd be. Wilder sticks to his short-fuse mania and gets off some big laughs, but Sutherland's preening fop/subdued street fighter never quite emerges as a three-dimensional character. Yorkin overdoses on swashbuckling action, a handful of riffs on Dumas, and some playful girl-ogling, yet at the expense of developing these characters (even the sequence where the peasant brothers are mistakenly brought to the castle falls flat on a narrative level, with a ruse about a violin case that feels pretty fatuous). However, there are several witty verbal duals which are smartly executed, and from a technical stand-point the film is keenly-judged--from the locations to the costumes to the music. But once the viewer realizes the movie is just a series of blackout sketches, the trimmings seem rather lofty and the frenzied footwork seems much ado about little. ** from ****

The plot is older than the ancient Greeks--twins mixed up at birth. But the stars are a scream. And the notion that Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland grew as twin brothers (one pair noble and the other a disgrace), is just one of the many bits of comedy of absurd that fill this slight but hysterical little movie.The wife of the noble version of Gene Wilder is also priceless, forever dressing up in costumes in vain efforts to satisfy his somewhat odd collection of sexual fetishes.But the real reason to see this gem is Hugh ("I thought it was a costume ball") Griffith as King Louis. He outclasses anyone within walking distance, even the great Sutherland. And absolutely effortlessly. The device that uses Orson Welles may or not work -- you have to decide. (Don't be too hard on Orson -- this was from the "We will serve no wine before its time" phase of his career.) But if you come across this on cable late some night, have a good time. It's obvious everyone who made the movie did.

Ten years before the Zuckers made Airplane, television producer Bud Yorkin (All in The Family, Sanford and Son) got in and out of the movie business very quickly with Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), a hilarious parody of just about every movie made about the French Revolution or based on the novels of Dumas. Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland play dual roles as two pairs of mismatched twins. One pair are Corsican noblemen conspiring with Marie and the Count DiSicci to depose the king. The other pair are Parisian peasants trying to escape the fighting. Wilder and Sutherland make a great comedy team (even doing a take off on the patty-cake bit, from the Hope/Crosby Road Pictures). With an introduction by Orson Wells, Hugh Griffith and an assortment of English character actors attempting French accents (I saw this once on a double bill with Tom Jones, and many of the principles are in both films) and a great deal of location footage filmed on the grounds of Versailles including a very chaotic battle scene.