The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

Very disappointing...

Powerful

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Directed by John 'An American Werewolf in London' Landis and written by Jim Abrahams and David & Jerry Zucker of Airplane fame, Kentucky Fried Movie is a scattershot skit comedy in which the gags come thick and fast. Fake movie trailers, faux news reports, and mock adverts abound, with the occasional cameo from a recognisable face.As is often the case with the sketch format, the comedy is very hit and miss—perhaps even more miss than hit—but when KFM scores, it does so brilliantly, as evidenced by the film's 'feature presentation', A Fistful of Yen, a keenly observed spoof of Enter The Dragon that sees Evan C Kim mercilessly lampooning Bruce Lee with deadly accuracy (best gags: Mr Loo's speech impediment, the guy with the bullhorn, and the three kung fu dudes, Hung Well, Long Wang and Enormous Genitals).Other moments worthy of mention are the trailer for the ultimate sexploitation flick Catholic High School Girls In Trouble (so many boobs!), the appearance of Big Jim Slade during The Wonderful World of Sex (a skit that also gives us the unforgettable line the line "the female, if she is so inclined, may latch onto his honker"), the very silly Courtroom sketch ("I'd like the ladies and gentlemen of the jury to listen to a tape"), and my personal favourite, Donald Sutherland as the Clumsy Clown.6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

A series of short, highly irreverent, and often tasteless skits.This crossed my desk because it was on a list of must-see cult films. I also wanted to see it because it comes from John Landis. Although I have seen clips, surprisingly it took until now (June 2017) to see it in its entirety. What was wrong with me? Although I am not typically a fan of gratuitous nudity, and this film has plenty of that, as a whole this is comedy gold. It is obvious how this was the same brand of humor that brought us "Airplane!" and "Naked Gun". In some ways, I would even go so far as to say this film is funnier than either of those. Special thanks to Donald Sutherland!

"The Kentucky Fried Movie" specializes in the tasteless. This isn't inherently a bad thing and, given the right material, can be genuinely funny. But this is not the right material.The movie is hit-or-miss on a good day, but the misses far outweigh the hits. Most of the jokes never land, and they usually wear out their welcome (Fistful of Yen just draaags, man). There were a few highlights - "Catholic School Girls in Trouble", "Big Jim Slade", "That's Armageddon", the film at eleven bumpers - but this is one of those movies I can say I've finally seen and move on. I'll stick with "Amazon Women on the Moon".5/10

The writers who would go on to create comedy classics Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and for good measure the guy who would go on to direct Animal House, combine to bring us a movie not even remotely as funny as any of those other movies I just mentioned. The Kentucky Fried Movie is a mess, a sketch comedy in which the laughs are few and far between. Watching this is an exercise in tedium, never more so than during the "feature presentation" dropped into the middle of the movie, a 30-minute martial arts parody which is an interminable bore. The best you can say for the majority of the other sketches is at least they're mercifully brief, some only a few seconds long and none more than five or six minutes in length. So at least if you don't like what you're seeing at a given moment, and way more often than not you won't, you know there will be something entirely different coming right up soon enough. But then inevitably that next sketch starts and it's lousy too and on and on and on we go. Somebody make it stop please.If you hold out any hope that the movie is ever going to gather any momentum at all the endless martial arts sequence kills that idea, bringing the movie to a dead stop. After that the movie crawls toward a merciful end. The last few sketches actually aren't half bad. There are some genuine laughs to be had there. But by that point you're so beaten down by all the miserable stuff you've been forced to sit through you can't fully appreciate it when you finally do see something funny. By the time you get to those last few sketches this movie has long since been doomed to failure. The writers threw a lot of garbage at the wall to see what would stick and very little did. About the best thing that can be said about this movie is that you're glad it exists because if it didn't there'd be no Airplane! But I'd watch Airplane! approximately 3,637 more times before I'd ever think of watching The Kentucky Fried Movie again.