History of the World, Part I | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

Name: History of the World, Part I
Released: 1981-6-12
Cast: Mel Brooks, Mel Brooks, Mel Brooks, Mel Brooks, Mel Brooks

History of the World, Part I

R
1h 32m
1981

63%

Join acclaimed funnyman Mel Brooks on an outrageous trip through history – and learn what “really” happened. Travel from a crazy spoof of 2001 to the Roman Empire, where Brooks plays a stand-up philosopher in Caesar’s Palace, to the French Revolution, where Brooks is King Louis XVI, and the Spanish inquisition, where this time, singing monks and swimming nuns perform fabulous musical numbers!

Director:

Mel Brooks

Producer:

Mel Brooks, Stuart Cornfeld, Alan Johnson

Writer:

Mel Brooks

Cast:

Mel Brooks, Mel Brooks, Mel Brooks, Mel Brooks, Mel Brooks, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

TOMATOMETER®

63%

Critics Consensus: History of the World: Part I may not have enough comedic inspiration to merit a Part II, but the sporadic cleverness of these anachronistic skits are still a testament to Mel Brooks' gift for farce.

Reviews

New Yorker

Pauline Kael

It’s Brooks’s audacity -- his treating cruelty and pain as a crazy joke, and doing it in a low-comedy context -- that gives History the kick that was missing from his last few films.

History of the World: Part I is Mel Brooks at his most appealing since The Producers and Young Frankenstein... This is just the sort of harmless, frequently hilarious summer movie that will appeal to adolescents of all ages.

"History of the World, Part 1" is one of the all-time great spoof comedies. Its genius can be seen right there in its title.

June 14, 2021

FULL REVIEW

Philadelphia Gay News

Larry Vitacco

As written and directed by Brooks, the movie's overreliance on sex, scat and Semitic jokes wears painfully thin halfway through the picture.

June 22, 2021

FULL REVIEW

New York Magazine/Vulture

David Denby

What [Brooks] takes to be the glorious folk humor that modern people have repressed looks to many of us like the tired jokes that were yawned off the burlesque stage 50 years ago.

December 31, 2019

FULL REVIEW