The best COMEDY since South Park !

Rating: Null/10 (7 August 2000)

Hilarious !
This might sound like a strange beginning to comment on this movie, but i can´t help it. And this comments might include some *Spoilers* ,but i can´t help that either.
And i say this because you can´t imagine how weird and funny was to be inside an almost sold out movie theater , listening to comments all around. Normally this is a very annoying thing, but this time i have to admit that it was almost impossible not to joke while watching this movie, such was the amount of BULL@#%& present in the screenplay.
Everybody was laughing through out the movie, and i just want to point out some of the great comedy moments in this film that caused that reaction, (not by a particular order)... The patriotic scenes were hilarious ! That scene in the church when Mel Gibson´s son comes to recruit people for the militia and he delivers that ridiculous speech about country and honor must be one of the most funny moments in the entire movie, only surpassed by those moments with the american flag right at the end. That one when Mel Gibson downbeated finds the flag on the saddle and then decides to go and kick the cr@p out of everybody created some of the most funny comments on the audience i ever heard ! And then when he grabs the flag at the end and by himself turns the outcome of the battle around must be one of the worst and most funny moments, since the speech of the american president in INDEPENDENCE DAY. Curiousily by the same director...
What´s wrong with this guy ?! Isn´t he supposed to be German ?! He must be one of the most americanized foreigners in the states since Arnie Swarzenneger !! Never since the ROCKY and RAMBO series, america had released such amount of funny ultra nationalistic crap. With THE PATRIOT , it looks like we´re back at the Ronald Reagan days, the president who loved Rambo !
And now all this wave of ultra nationalistic stuff is coming out of the work of a German guy ? And worst of all, this time all this propaganda comes out disguised under a poltically correct cover of more human heroes. Hey, at least Rambo and Rocky claimed immediately that america was the best country in the world. Rolland Emerich movies don´t even have the guts to do that, which makes them even more funny.
Anyway, another great comedy moment was the one, when the racist gets saved by the black man. Wow, nobody expected that ! :-) After that some people next to me, comment that if the movie wasn´t such a comedy, they would have gone ! Ok, Roland Emerich is the most cliché guy ever to set foot on Hollywood, but, come on, there are limits !! And i thought ID4 was bad ! At least ID4 didn´t tryied to be nothing more than just a great popcorn nationalistic movie. THE PATRIOT has such pretentions of being an Historical fresco that it gets exactly the opposite effect. THE PATRIOT has such an amount of clichés, that sometimes it get almost unbearable to keep following this movie. Such amount of clichés that we would need another text like this just to make fun of them.
And i´m not even complaining about the English depiction in this movie. It´s of course totally historically unfair, because there are bad and good people everywhere. Altough the english can´t complain much about the cruelty depicted on this movie, because it´s not that farfetched compared to what they did during their British Empire days. It´s not because of this THE PARIOT is a bad movie. It´s because the way the elements are balanced. We never know ,if this is an adventure movie, an Historical, an Epic drama, a propaganda film, or just an action movie. That and the amount of stupid clichés is what sinks it.
If it wasn´t for Mel Gibson and a few other secondary actors, this movie would be totaly unberable. They and the technical stuff saves THE PATRIOT. Great design, photography and cute special effects.
Once again Rolland Emerich delivers another great "Turkey". Fun, but totaly empty and ridiculous. Rolland Emerich, has confirmed himself, as some kind of king of "B" and "Z" movies, but within the "A" league. Pretty weird....
Anyway, go and see it, and have a few or a lot of laughs, which if you don´t live in America , i can guarantee that you will find this movie extremely funny. And there are still people who believe this is a very realistic historical movie...man... :-)