The film tells the story of a wealthy and arrogant businessman who got into a strange bet on an institutional competitor who has intelligence and mind on the street to live penniless and unknown in the rugged streets of Los Angeles for 30 days. As time goes on, this man appears differently and proves to be actually stricter.
The slapstick here is nothing to rent the film over. Oddly, it's the serious moments that charm. I was embarrassed to myself for being choked up by Mel Brooks.
Lesser Mel Brooks has some funny bits if homelessness is funny at all
Juicy Cerebellum
February 05, 2003
Good message, bad comedy.
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
August 14, 2003
So pretty much does this Brooks misfire.
Movie Metropolis
February 13, 2003
This was supposed to be Brooks's comical stab at social injustice, a kind of My Man Godfrey for the nineties, but it doesn't work.
EmanuelLevy.Com
February 15, 2007
A slapstick vaudeville about the poor and homeless? Inadvertently Mel Brooks gives the dangerous impression that homelessness is cute and that Downtown LA is filled with adorable and eccentric people who "just happen" to be roofless.
