START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME (1970) ** French Revolution (1789) satire, presented in the Batman television format. As if that isn't promising enough, Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland have two roles each with which to swirl and prance through the ballrooms and bedrooms of Versailles. They're both highly effective, even when they don't have much for lines to work with, which is, sadly, almost all of the time. You can only take facial gestures, intonation, and raised eyebrows so far, and however far it is they go past it so far that they don't quite make it. Sutherland is consistently amusing in his gay aristocratic swordsman schtick, but everything else is like Ewa Aulin's preoccupation with birthmarks-somewhat amusing, but not worth building the entire foundation of a film on. Orson Welles' appearance, however, is no doubt highly serious business. Any conspiracy theorist worth his shredder starts taking coded notes whenever the Merovingian dynasty is engaged in such forthright earnestness...results will differ as to whether it was a call to arms in support, or a fateful warning against, but either way you have to pay admission to the hall of mirrors.
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