As with many of the writer/director/producer’s works, not every gag lands (a couple actually fall quite flat), with a few portions meandering a touch, but several definitely stand out, sure to endure.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 20, 2024

It’s Brooks’s audacity -- his treating cruelty and pain as a crazy joke, and doing it in a low-comedy context -- that gives History the kick that was missing from his last few films.

| Sep 12, 2023

History of the World: Part I is Mel Brooks at his most appealing since The Producers and Young Frankenstein... This is just the sort of harmless, frequently hilarious summer movie that will appeal to adolescents of all ages.

| May 3, 2023

"History of the World, Part 1" is one of the all-time great spoof comedies. Its genius can be seen right there in its title.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 14, 2021

As written and directed by Brooks, the movie's overreliance on sex, scat and Semitic jokes wears painfully thin halfway through the picture.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 26, 2020

What [Brooks] takes to be the glorious folk humor that modern people have repressed looks to many of us like the tired jokes that were yawned off the burlesque stage 50 years ago.

| Dec 31, 2019

History of the World, Part I-which has no sequel-spoofs multiple genres in this anthology showing that there are no limits to the mind of writer-director Mel Brooks.

| Dec 27, 2018

Mel Brooks's movie History of the World, Part 1 is a rambling, undisciplined, sometimes embarrassing failure from one of the most gifted comic filmmakers around.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 12, 2018

... an entertaining mishmash of skits which finds Mel Brooks back in lively form, both for better and for worse.

| Oct 4, 2017

Dirty jokes, some sparkle in uneven Mel Brooks classic.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 15, 2010

Hearing some of those old, beloved one-liners again made me smile, but they did not have the power to make me laugh anew.

| May 27, 2010

Brooks' fractured History is salvaged by the tuneful 'Inquisition.'

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 19, 2010

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 20, 2007

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 29, 2006

A solid -- if not outstanding -- comedy, with enough of Brooks' ribald irreverence to gloss over the weak spots.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 10, 2006

Brooks proved that increasing the vulgarity level doesn't necessarily translate into more laughs. Gag after gag falls flat in this potty-mouthed dud.

| Original Score: C- | Apr 11, 2006

The fact that there has been no Part 2 is ample proof that God hates us all.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 21, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 7, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 17, 2005

Crude, rude Mel Brooks has low laughs

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 19, 2004