Joe limonade

Although this film is (obviously) all in Czech, most English speakers won't have any trouble figuring out the story, since it's an extremely broad parody of a genre most people are familiar with. The hero is dressed all in white, the bad guys wear black and skulk around like Snidely Whiplash. On the women's side, we have your basic saloon girl with a heart of gold and the virginal ingenue, who we know will eventually end up with Lemonade Joe. Considering this movie was made under Communist rule, it's a pretty dead-on satire of the American Western.

Made during the "Prague Spring", which produced a burst of creativity, this movie brims with lightheartedness and wild satirical wit. It's a spoof of Westerns, not so much the John Ford type as silent-movie serials. I could go on a long time telling you my favorite jokes from it, but I won't... Lobby your local revival theater or TV station, because too few people have had the opportunity to see this utterly original movie.

"Lemonade Joe" is one of the funniest movies ever made. Certainly it is the funnest western. It is also a triumph of expressionism.

The sequences are dazzling. The opening sequence catches you by surprise; you're watching the funniest western fight in a saloon without warning. Throughout, the film just explodes with these sequences that are hysterically funny and reflect a world gone mad.

The last third of the film begins to slow down. It also becomes very expressionistic, which annoys people who do not allow themselves to appreciate disruptions to how they process their cinema.

However, the film finishes very strongly. "Lemonade Joe" is a wildly adventurous and pleasurable experience.

For forty years (oops, revealed my age, oh well), I have been trying to track this down. I first saw this film at age twelve, in a drive in theater, on a double bill with (I think) a re-release of "The Great Race". Historical note: the version I saw was dubbed, not subtitled (I long thought it Italian in origin); the tinting was not sepia with yellow highlights, it was just glaring yellow; and it was called "The Lemonaid Kid" not "Lemonaid Joe" (hence part of the difficulty tracking it down). (Since this release title is reminiscent of "The Lemondrop Kid", I can imagine paranoid lawyers at MGM giving this film's release a lot of hassle, which may explain how it got so buried.) I thought it the funniest thing I had ever seen and that impression stuck with me as I grew older and developed a taste for the more absurdist and aggressive style of comedy, e.g., the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, etc. i knew I had seen something very special in "Lemonaid", but found no references to it in movie catalogs like the Maltin book, and nobody who knew films seemed to know anything about it - and I come from Rochester, NY, home of the second largest collection of film in the country, the Dryden-Eastman collection. People there know film. But nobody knew this film.

This film had a major impact on a very young man and changed his taste in comedy forever, and perhaps changed all of his perceptions, insofar as humor is one of the most important responses we make to the world. That says a lot for the power of this film. I certainly hope another viewing will justify my warm memories of it.

Note added August 26, 2009:

Well, I finally found it - it is currently available in 10 chapters at Youtube.

It is not only everything I remember it for, but far more - one of the wildest visual comedies of its era and one of the sharpest satires I have ever seen.

The only weakness is the ending - while it makes its point, it's too blunt and too easy.

But the rest of the film is basically Brecht-Weill remaking "Support Your Local Sheriff" (which hadn't been made yet, of course) - absolutely incredible mix of pop culture and art-house comedy styles, as unforgettable now as it was 40 years ago (well beyond mere 'camp,' it hasn't aged a bit), decidedly one of a kind.

(PS - I've read Leone fans wondering if this film references "fistful of Dollars" - oh, no - Leone, Corbucci, and other Italian directors were almost certainly influenced by this.)

"Limonadovy Joe" is part of the golden fund of Czech cinema; it is broadcast every year on TV and you find it in most Czech households on VHS. The fact that this movie was made in the Communist times and that it is a parody to Wild West pictures, does not mean that "Limonadovy Joe" is an ideological trash; I am sure Wild West lovers would not feel offended by this movie. It is a skeptical and self-ironic piece, but in my view, still rather homage to western. 60-ies were the best time for Czech cinema. `Limonadovy Joe' fits into those liberal years of good movies. It is a family comedy with cheerful, but still intelligent humor. Joe remained the only important role for Karel Fiala, but guaranteed him a life-long popularity in his country. Please note excellent performance of actors in episode roles, like e. g. Vladimír Mensik in the role of barman. Also the graphical aspect of the movie is worth mentioning; it is stylized in retro black and white, whereas each scene is colored to another color.