The Worst Film Ever

Beautiful, moving film.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The great playwright George Bernard Shaw takes a step up to the pulpit to preach the desires of the early Christians to either worship their savior (and just one God) or be willing to be put to death in this light comedy which will touch the soul (of those it doesn't offend) as did another movie from this era with the same co-stars in search of "The Robe".Fleeing from the Romans to the hills, milquetoast Alan Young and his harpy wife Elsa Lanchaster stop to rest when they are confronted by a male lion. The simpleton Androcles senses that the lion is in too much pain to eat them and finds a thorn in the lion's paw. He struggles to remove it (with comical overtones) and the lion is emotionally touched by this good deed. But Androcles is captured (whatever happens to his wife is never explained) and on the journey back to Rome to be fed to their own lions, he meets former sinners Jean Simmons and Robert Newton, as well as soldiers Alan Mowbray, Jim Backus and Victor Mature. He joins his fellow Christians in singing modern Christian hymns, ironically not written until centuries after this story took place.The inclusion of "Onward Christian Soldiers" adds a satirical edge to this screen adaption of Shaw's play, as does the presence of Backus as one of the soldiers who looks extremely un-Roman. A huge cast of familiar faces pop up in a variety of smaller roles, with Maurice Evans as a very regal Cesar and Gene Reynolds as a pompous Roman longing to see at least one Christian being devoured.Obviously painted backdrops give a theatrical feeling to the Rome setting and several encounters with lions are phony, filmed in a truly comical manner. A few gladiator battles show the violence and gore that the Christians must have had to deal with, and Newton's battle with several of them is extremely gripping as his character is torn over his past obsession with his bad temper which often lead to violence and his new devotion to Jesus.The love match between the beautiful Simmons and the masculine Mature is a reminder of their participation in "The Robe" the following year, as well as several other films made during this time. Some viewers may be taken aback by the preachiness of the script, but it is made palatable by the passionate way it is delivered with a sense of the writer's own devotion echoing its way into both your ears and your heart, indicating that his own spirituality was mixed with his sometimes sardonic humor over the human condition.

An adaptation of a lesser George Bernard Shaw play. It supposedly doesn't "get" the original play, at least according to some other reviews I perused. I'm not even sure what the point of it all was (perhaps that, throughout all times, Christians have been annoyingly self-righteous, but at least during Roman days, you could feed them to lions), and it's a pretty big mess. However, I have to admit, almost grudgingly, that I sort of enjoyed it, perhaps just because of its weirdness. Alan Young plays Androcles, a comedic character with a hen-pecking wife (Elsa Lanchester, really playing it up - I have to wonder why they didn't have her carry a rolling pin). Because of his apparent friendship with a lion (from whose paw, of course, he pulled a thorn), people accuse him of witchcraft, and he is suggested to the Caesar (Maurice Evans) as a potential sacrifice. Also among those sacrifices are Jean Simmons, a beautiful young Christian, and Robert Newton, a pious warrior. Young is amusing in his way, and Evans is quite amusing, but the real reason to watch this film are for Simmons and Newton, both of whom are wonderful. Victor Mature is the least successful member of the cast, playing an army captain who falls for Simmons. He looks as if he's about to have a stroke most of the time. Alan Young is perhaps most famous for playing Wilbur on Mr. Ed, but to my generation he's even better known as the voice of Scrooge McDuck in stuff like Mickey's Christmas Carol and, of course, DuckTales. He's in his 90s nowadays and is still doing Scrooge McDuck.

Androcles is a devout Christian, all creatures are friends of the Earth. During an encounter with a lion, who is roaring in pain, he removes a huge thorn from the beasts' paw, thus creating a friend for life. A short time after the incident, Androcles and a number of other Christians are arrested and condemned to death in the arena. They are to die by fighting with gladiators or eaten alive by lions, is there any chance that Androcles and his companions can survive their fate?During my viewing of this film I was eating some soup and bread, I literally nearly choked on the bread and expelled the soup via my nose! Such is the hammy comedy on offer here, Androcles And The Lion, adapted from a George Bernard Shaw play, is an enjoyable picture if one is prepared for just what a ham sandwich it is. The cast, featuring Victor Mature, Jean Simmons, Alan Young and Robert Newton, play it as cardboard cutouts {Simmons possibly the only one taking it serious}, with the technical aspects so bad I dare you not to laugh out loud as Young dances with a man in a Lion suit!!Don't take it serious and you should be OK, and I'm certainly not annoyed that I sat thru it, but I would rather wrestle a Lion and two Tigers before I had to sit and watch it again! 4/10

G.B.S. declared in the lengthly "Preface" to this play, written years after its 1913 premiere (the "Preface is actually longer than the play itself), that he had written it in pique at the one J.M. Barry play he had ever thoroughly disliked - PETER PAN! The sentiment certainly sets a bench mark for measuring what Shaw may have accomplished in his charming, witty examination of a "Greek wizard" Christian (Androcles) who finds animals of all stripes and species more lovable and easy to get along with than his long (and vocally) suffering wife and neighbors.It also may explain why Hollywood missed with this neatly produced filming despite a number of inspired casting choices (Maurice Evans as Caesar, Elsa Lanchaster as Androcles' wife & Robert Newton as the warrior/Christian, Ferrovius) and deft directorial touches.In trying to focus on the "family friendly" (deadly words in the Hollywood lexicon) aspects of Shaw's charming satire, the film gives a bad case of the "cutsies" to the central role (it would have been interesting to see this Alan Young performance before he became so identified with his role, Wilbur, in TV's iconic MR. ED) and soft pedals or ignores most of the legitimately humorous byplay among his fellow Christians who wish martyrdom to wildly varying degrees and the infighting of the professional gladiators who echo (in somewhat more bloodthirsty fashion) the outrageous practicality of Captain Bluntschli in Shaw's early ARMS AND THE MAN.Having made the decision to play the lion *as* a lion (before or after Harpo Marx departed the production?), the delicious hold on adult satire Shaw infused his play with was probably a lost cause, but what remains remains a very pleasant diversion worth a Saturday afternoon. For lovers of good Shaw however, it's more than a little watered down - perhaps most surprising of all, more watered down that the later equally enjoyable musical version Richard Rodgers and Peter Stone did for TV with Noel Coward as Caesar and Norman Wisdom as Androcles!