A Zorro Subject

Today, I finally got around to seeing the movie Zorro, The Gay Blade. Mind you, this was never that high on my "to do" list, but it's been there for something like 10 to 15 years, since someone in my circle of friends first fired off a quote from this unusual and somewhat obscure film.

I think I'm being honest when I say I had not built up a decade's worth of expectation for this movie. I simply wanted to finally have seen it. I figured on a few laughs, at least. And that's exactly what I got... a few laughs, with a fair amount of dead time in between.

It really comes across like a Mel Brooks film that Mel Brooks never got around to making himself. It's that same kind of recipe -- a dash of slapstick, a pinch of making jokes at the expense of foreign accents, a reasonable (but not extraordinary) story actually holding the jokes in place. Actually, I suppose you could say Mel Brooks did almost make this film many years later, when he did "Robin Hood: Men in Tights." It had very much the same sensibility, and very much the same sort of laugh-to-silence ratio. (Mel Brooks' last decent movie was Spaceballs, and even that was not as good as his earlier work.)

George Hamilton basically makes the movie with his ridiculous dual role (for which, if you can believe this, he was actually nominated for a Golden Globe), though coming in a close second is the costume designer, whose great work makes you laugh more than anything else in the film.

I don't know if it's really worth the time to watch the movie, but hey, now at least I'm in on the joke the next time someone talks about the "pippoles," or asks if something was "green like a lime," or cautions that it is "worse to be poor than to dress poorly."

Is it worth your time to be in on the joke, if you haven't seen the movie before? Well, you decide. Do you feel like sitting through a D+ movie for a half dozen good laughs?