Another of the movies that I watched when I was looking for something on the Watch TCM app that was just about to leave the app was Start the Revolution Without Me. I didn't know much about it beyond the synopsis, but watching the opening credits, I noticed it was another collaboration between Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear, who are probably more famous for TV shows like All in the Family. Seeing their names gave me reason for trepidation, as I'll discuss in a bit.
After the opening credits, we get some opening narration from Orson Welles that little things can have great effect on history, and that this is the story of one of those little-known little things that might well have changed the course of the French Revolution. Flash back to a couple of decades before the revolution....
The Duke Di Sisi and his highly pregnant wife are on their way to Paris during the reign of Louis XV. for some reason it's important to them to have the baby at Versailles, but they're not going to make it in time, so they stop in some small village. Unfortunately, there's another woman, Mrs. Coupé, who is about to give birth as well. Worse for the doctor is that both women wind up giving birth to twin sons. And, the midwife is negligent in keeping the twins separated and identified. So the doctor decides to do the least bad thing, which is to mix up the twins, so that each couple will at least get one of their biological children. And, after all, the idea of fraternal twins would have been well known even then.
Fast forward to 1789, as the voiceovers tell us in interminable detail. The Coupés, Claude (Gene Wilder) and Charles (Donald Sutherland) were orphaned and live by their wits, although Claude is revealed to have a girlfriend. Philippe (Gene Wilder) and Pierre (Donald Sutherland) Di Sisi are neurotic brothers living on the family estate in Corsica, well away from Paris where the revolution is about to come.
Meanwhile, in Paris, Louis XVI (Hugh Griffith) seems more worried about tinkering with his clocks while his wife Marie Antoinette (Billie Whitelaw) is involved in various sorts of international diplomacy. Louis suspects something might be up, so he sends for the Di Sisi brothers. However, Louis' advisor and all-around henchmen the Duke d'Escargot (Victor Spinetti) realizes this is a good opportunity to act against the King and get the Di Sisi twins out of the way. So he intercepts the letter and starts a plot of his own.
Unfortunately, the peasants are revolting, and have a plan to steal a barge full of weapons. As part of the plan, the Coupé brothers are supposed to be sacrificed. Things go wrong, and somehow that Coupé brothers wind up in a carriage headed for Versailles, where they're taken in as the Di Sisi brothers, albeit wearing peasant garments as some sort of disguies. The real Di Sisi brothers, meanwhile, have to go back to the commander of the peasants and try to figure out a way to survive.
The combination of the "which twin is which" plot along with a sort of Trading Places storyline ought to make for a lot of comic opportunity. However, in watching the other movies that Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear made together, I had the same thinking. All of those wound up having some good points, but being fairly uneven movies, with the whole being less than the sum of its parts. I'm sorry to say that I found myself getting the same impression with Start the Revolution Without Me. Some of the jokes are just run into the ground, and the Di Sisi brothers are just made too nuts. Orson Welles does the best he can with his limited material, and fortunately for him he gets the least wacky material which allows him to deadpan things. The movie also has some nice production values, having been filmed entirely on location in France.
Some people will probably like Start the Revolution Without Me more than I did, so definitely watch this one and draw your own conclusions.
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