Product: The Court Jester [VHS] (1956)
Rating: 5.0
The Pellet With the Poison's In the Vessel With the Pestle!
Danny Kaye's best, and easily one of the top ten funniest movies ever made.Kaye is more or less the mascot clown of the Black Fox's band of merry men (a Robin Hood-ish bunch in the woods), who conspire to place the true infant king on the throne in place of the country's present pretender. Kaye is in charge of delivering the infant safely to underground members in the palace, and gains entry by knocking out Giacomo, "King of Jesters, and Jester of Kings," who Kaye doesn't realize is already an impostor - the real Giacomo was replaced by the world's most famous assassin, hired by evil court intriguers led by sinister knight Basil Rathbone. The king's daughter (Angela Lansbury, at her youngest and most beautiful) believes Kaye is her great secret love, come to "take her away from all this," and her personal attendant (who is a witch) hypnotizes Kaye into becoming the greatest swordsman in the land to win her affections. Everyone takes Kaye to be someone he isn't, and of course by the end of the picture Rathbone is foiled, the faux king is deposed, Lansbury gets her Prince Charming, and Kaye delivers the infant king and gets the girl.What elevates this above any average musical comedy (it goes without saying that Kaye sings a lot of very funny, rapid-patter songs) is the lickety-split script and flawless performances from the entire cast. Except for a rather slow beginning, this movie shoots out of a gun at lightning speed and never slows down.So many famous comedy routines came from this movie, that people quote from them all the time without realizing this was their source. The "pellet with the poison" routine is the most famous of them, and the funniest of them all. Kaye turning into the greatest swordsman in the land at the snap of a finger - and back into a cravenly coward at the next snap - is hysterical. His one-day-wonder knighthood - done in order that he may accept a duel from a knight whom he has offended - has so many comic bits in it, it's hard to pick one to mention, but probably the most famous is the cranking-up of the speed of the slow, solemn obligation: "Is...he read-y...to take...the sol-emn vows...of no-ble knight-hood...? Yea, ver-i-ly, yea...yea, ver-i-ly yea...!"Be warned, this movie is more addictive than Monty Python. You can watch it dozens of times, and still laugh every bit as hard at every old bit, each time.