charlytully I rate every musical movie I saw before the age of 12 as a "9" or "10," since the songs are as familiar as smells from the childhood kitchen, but I'm well into adulthood seeing this for the first time. I notice a lot of the people rating FORUM as a "7" or higher are filling in the blanks in the movie with their memory of the play. The closest I was to FORUM before the movie was watching Phil Silvers as "Sgt. Bilko" a few times on TV. If you come to FORUM with fresh ears, you'll join me in noticing there are two real songs ("Comedy Tonight" and "Lovely") included in the film, plus a few scraps of incidental blather from Leon Greene as Captain Miles Gloriosus (which makes Franco Nero's posturing with Lancelot's "C'est Moi!" in the movie CAMELOT--based on a Broadway hit preceding FORUM--look like the performance of the decade). The dubbing on the DVD is EXTREMELY out-of-synch, even by 1960s or foreign movie standards. Coming to IMDb and reading that 75% of Stephen Sondheim's original Broadway score was deleted for the movie because "the producers thought musicals were blase" produces one giant yelp of "WTF!" Why bother even doing a cinema version, then? Evidently this is a travesty along the lines of doing MUSIC MAN without "76 Trombones," or GUYS & DOLLS sans "Luck Be a Lady Tonight." Apparently the Oscar voters felt so ashamed for their industry that they tried to cover up the misfire by giving this flick a statuette for "Best Score." Well, if I'm going to get a Reader's Digest version, I'd prefer something even shorter--perhaps a 60-second rendition by those five-minute Shakespeare guys--to this heartlessly amputated truncation.

Petri Pelkonen The story is set in the ancient Rome.Pseudolys, a lazy slave wants nothing more than to be free.He gets that chance when he finds out that the young master has fell in love.The girl is Philia, a virgin in the house of Lycus, a slave dealer who sells beautiful women.If Pseudolys gets the two lovebirds together, he's free.A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a very funny musical comedy.Zero Mostel is brilliant in the lead.There's also the silent comedy legend Buster Keaton there.It's most hilarious when Senex meets the goddess Philia at the door.And they tell him she's the new maid.Or Lycus doing acrobatics.The chariot race is really something.The song heard in this movie is really catchy.Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone: a comedy tonight.

Lee Eisenberg Transpose "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" to ancient Rome and you basically have "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". This story of a slave (Zero Mostel) having to help arrange a romance between two people is worth watching just for the chase scene at the end. If you've been to Spain or Italy, it's neat to see the sites again. But above all, this is what 1960s humor is all about. They must have had fun filming this movie. And personally, I think that it's a good idea that they cut down the musical aspect and left it a straightforward comedy. You're sure to have more than a few laughs.Also starring Phil Silvers, Michael Crawford, Jack Gilford, Buster Keaton, Jon Pertwee and Ingrid Pitt.

jdollak While I enjoy a lot of the classic musicals, I find that there are a lot of filler songs included. This is one of the instances that does not fit that category. The songs are excellent, and are performed in a definitive way. Zero Mostel is an incredible performer, and his antics here are spectacular. His supporting cast is equally memorable, but Zero steals the show. The direction and pacing of the show is also handled perfectly. It reminds me partly of Benny Hill, only a bit more fresh. It is surprising that this movie has not been held up as a watermark for both comedy and musicals. I place it in a category with Some Like It Hot.