Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers

I just can't believe that I will ever disagree with another persons review of a movie more than the previous persons review of The Corsican Brothers. This movie is so hilarious that I own it, and have had the pleasure of watching it dozens of times. In their last good movie together, Cheech and Chong depart from the usual drug humor, and will have you rolling (pun intended!) with laughter! Set during the French Revolution, The Corsican Brothers is a laugh fest form beginning to end, and is a movie that I have and will continue to recommend to everyone that enjoys a good laugh. Anyone that could write a review stating "I didn't even smile once" had to have not understood some of the humor. Please watch this movie. You won't be disappointed.

In modern France, Los Guys (Cheech and Chong) is a rock band playing horribly which forces the locals to pay them to stop. A fortune teller (Rae Dawn Chong) tells them a story about revolutionary France. Louis (Cheech Marin) and Lucian Corsican (Tommy Chong) are twins born to two aristocratic fathers. Their fathers duel and both end up killed. They are raised as peasants and find that they feel the other's pain. Louis is raised in Mexico. He returns and the brothers run afoul of The Evil Fuckaire. Fuckaire tries to execute the brothers but they end up escaping while the princesses fall for them.

This is mostly unfunny. There are a couple of funny jokes but they are not enough. Cheech and Chong work best as dumb and dumber bros. Cheech is able to keep some of his idiocy by making his character Mexican and dealing with societal differences. Chong is playing straight and mostly unfunny. It would be a lot funny with the Los Guys traveling back in time and thereby becoming fish out of water. This writing is simply not good enough.

I loved this film, and as the second Cheech and Chong film I'd ever seen (the first being 'It Came From Hollywood'), I laughed myself mad. Don't be a fool, see this film!

I won't go into details about the story behind it, but if you haven't seen it, you really must see it!

Cheech and Chong are performing their unique brand of rock music in modern day France when they are approached by a gypsy who reads their past and tells them of their past lives in France. There they were brothers, spurned by their royal parents due to being the spawn of another man. The two grow up to be taken for outlaws and sentenced to death by the King of France. When their beheading becomes a farce, the King pardons them to save face, however for the love of two women they infiltrate the palace by way of cunning surprise.

The running `joke' in this film is that Cheech and Chong are brothers with a bond that means one feels the other's pain. This joke is hammering into the ground ignoring the fact that it isn't even funny the first time! The plot is a shambles that is just an excuse for the duo to monkey around in a different time period. The gags are all very poor - I was in a relaxed silly mood and ready to laugh but I didn't even smile once - I swear to god, not even once!

Some of the gags are so lame that I found my mood just getting lower and lower as I watched. In respect to the film I stuck with it to the bitter end but if I could take back the time I spent watching this I would do it in a flash. Sadly all I can do now is commit my thoughts to this review and hopefully move past this unpleasant chapter in my life. Chong is rubbish here, as are almost all the overacting support cast with absurd makeup and accents! Rae Dawn Chong is really cute in a tiny cameo but it is Cheech Martin who is worth watching if you're in the mood for it. He may not really be very funny here due to the material but at least he plays along with it and seems to be having fun (more than I was at least).

Overall this is just one big waste of time. If you get enjoyment from this film then I salute you because you did much better than me in that regard. Usually I would guess that makers of films this bad must be on drugs or something, but here I assume that the problem was that Chong wasn't high when it came to this film - if he was he might have managed to insert some fun, wit, imagination or enjoyment into the film; as it is he doesn't get any of these in and fills the gap with rubbish instead.

In March, 2002, after my parents and I had seen the disturbing - but very well done - "In the Bedroom", we felt like we needed something really light, so we rented "Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers"; I mean, what could be more easygoing than a movie starring filmdom's favorite goof-ball stoners? This one turned out to be probably their lowest movie ever. For starters, no drug humor. It features them as siblings in pre-revolutionary France (despite the fact that they talk like 20th century Americans) making a mess of the status quo. Much of the little humor that the movie provides derives from the fact that if one of them gets injured, the other feels it.

So, this is definitely not the Cheech & Chong movie that I recommend. Their other movies are far better. Also starring Edie McClurg and Rae Dawn Chong, and they probably prefer to omit this from their filmographies.