If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

A Major Disappointment

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

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.

Nostalgic, tuneful and delightfully funny, this splendid evocation of mid-twenties burlesque is brilliantly acted and most attractively staged. My only qualm is that the story itself is rendered somewhat less engaging by the director's over-use of close-ups. He has even gone to the trouble of persistently blowing them up in the lab, and thus ruining the texture of the color photography. Also, the edited-in clips from newsreels and old features were not, to my mind, always effective. True, an attempt has been made – not altogether successfully – to overcome the problem of color co-ordination, but the lack of step- printing is an obvious irritation. However, these quibbles should not be allowed to spoil the enjoyment of the burlesque itself, plus some spirited action scenes, plus such glorious dialogue as Paine's variations on being found in the closet.

Noisy, chaotic, and irreverent, it's one comedy skit after another in this story, based on historical facts, of the night in 1925 when the New York City cops raided Minsky's Burlesque House. The story centers on a naive, religious girl named Rachel (Britt Ekland) who wonders into the joint, and whose dancing seems to fill an immediate need of the joint's operator, Raymond Paine (Jason Robards).What I had hoped to find was a period film with some great 1920s songs. But "The Night They Raided Minsky's" seemed more like an expanded version of the 1960s television show, "Laugh-In" than a cinematic trip back to the roaring twenties. The songs in this film were not especially memorable. Dance numbers seemed flat and uninspired. The slapstick routines and jokes were totally not funny. And instead of historically real, characters seemed more like phantoms from the mind of a script writer. Only the outlandish costumes seemed authentic.The film's cinematography was mostly in color. But there were periods of B&W. And near the beginning, visual effects create the impression that viewers are looking at images through some sort of strange wire mesh.The best scenes in the film were those that included the wonderful Bert Lahr. Unfortunately, he died during filming, so his presence in the film is minimal.Otherwise, the casting and acting were not impressive. Jason Robards was not cut out to be a comedian. His performance here seems forced. But much worse was the casting of Britt Ekland, who helps the film not at all. Her European accent is inconsistent with a small town girl from Pennsylvania. And she is totally not convincing as someone who is naive or religious. Indeed, I found her presence to be both implausible and very, very distracting.For me, this film was a disappointment. But I am glad that it is available on DVD. There are no doubt many viewers who would enjoy the film's bawdiness and the various entertainers, despite the film's weaknesses.

Why doesn't everybody just love this movie? It is one of most delightful comedies that I have ever seen. I saw it when it first came out in the cinema and watched it three times that first week and at least four times since.It is a very stylized movie, with an introductory narration right out of the 1920's. The style carries right through the film, with wonderful vaudeville routines. The "girls" are not particularly beautiful and are, by current standards a little overweight. Also they seem to be going through the motions with a variety of personalities. They do not have beautiful singing voices and they do not dance in perfect synchronization but nobody, especially them, seems to care. Burlesque is, after all, light entertainment. The comedy skits are very simple and unintelligent but they are performed with great panache. Sir Norman Wisdom (born 1915), the great British stage and screen clown of the Charlie Chaplin ilk, and Jason Robards Jr., the dapper Oscar-winning, American actor of the classic stage are the two central male characters and are both attracted to the beautiful Amish girl who has left home to dance stories from the Bible on stage. Wisdom is a master clown and can move in ways that are magically humorous. Burlesque has two meanings, with two spellings: - a humorous and provocative stage show featuring slapstick humour, comic skits, bawdy songs, striptease acts, and a scantily clad female chorus. (Burlesk) - an artistic composition, especially literary or dramatic, that, for the sake of laughter, vulgarizes lofty material or treats ordinary material with mock dignity. (Burlesque) The movie is a burlesque about burlesk. It also makes fun of religion, stage performances, censorship, prudery, friendship, business, fraud, crime, police, audience intelligence, class distinction, love, seduction, hypocrisy, etc. The mood is intense from start to finish, with several collages of scenes from the past and the movie's present. When I was not laughing out loud, I was laughing inside. The comedy on the stage is very elementary but the comedy in the story is often quite subtle and intelligent. Back to the initial question — I think that the movie may be too stylized for many people to enjoy, especially since the style has long been almost extinct. But if one accepts the style and allows oneself to become immersed in it and flow with it, the movie can be great.

I only saw this once and it was okay. The real interesting thing about this is the story around its editing, which is told in Ralph Rosenblum's book WHEN THE SHOOTING STOPS... He and Norman Lear had to dig up tons of old stock footage to insert into the cut in order to make it palatable.