WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

BelSports 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.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

leplatypus This early 70s movie is about a white catholic french racist man compelled to live a crazy week-end filled with Arabs and Jews! For sure, the movie plays on the clichés about everyone (even the french!) and it's really funny! As i kept laughing, am i a racist? not at all! i just like to have fun! Those who feel prejudiced by such movie can't understand humor and it's impossible to teach them now! For sure today we will have complains from all the communities in spite the freedom of expression! It's a shame, all the more than all involved in the production said that this movie was like a magical cure and led them to think over their attitudes! So racism is erased by making people ask questions and a movie like this is the perfect tool! In addition, a bit like the Titanic sinking in 1912, the movie was done in 1973 so the last year of economic growth before a lot of crisis and also massive immigration! So you really see what was France and particularly Paris then and it's sure totally different of what it is today!

semiotechlab-658-95444 "Les Aventures De Rabbi Jacob" (1973) is actually based on two very different plot lines: The movie starts in New York, showing children playing in a street somewhere in Lower East Side and waiting to say good-bye to their revered Rabbi Jacob, who, after more then thirty years, returns to his native France in occasion of the Bar-Mitzwah of his nephew David. However, before the Rabbi and a good dozen of his friends make it - all together in one single taxi can - to the airport, the movie starts, so-to-say a second time, showing the industrial Mr. Pivert (Louis De Funes) and his chauffeur Salomon rushing home to Paris for the wedding of Pivert's daughter. But not enough with these two main lines: There is a third one interwoven: The trip of Mohammed Larbi Slimane (Claude Giraud) on the flight of his henchmen under the lead of the Colonel Fares (Renzo Montagnani). Now, the second plot-line with Pivert and Salomon breaks insofar apart, as Pivert fires his chauffeur Salomon because he is refusing to help his boss out of a misery that he (Salomon) caused, driving their car into a lake - because it is Shabbes. However, again, the fact that Salomon is Jewish, is a little side-line again to the real Rabbi Jacob, who turns out to be his uncle. Therefore, from the second plot-line, only Pivert remains, and he soon meets Slimane, so that the second and the third plot-line merge. After a long and funny trip, they arrive just at Orly Airport where the real Rabbi Jacob and his assistant arrive (merging of the second and third with the first plot-line). And at this point, the road-movie goes over into a screwball comedy, because the Jewish grand-mother, the sister-in-law of the real Rabbi Jacob, takes Pivert and Slimane for the real couple, because they had themselves to disguise as rabbis on their flight from the Colonel Fares and his henchmen and are at that time in Orly, when the real Rabbi and his assistant are scheduled to arrive. Thus, Pivert and Slimane, neither Rabbis nor even familiar with basic Jewish customs, have to play their newly overtaken roles as good as it gets in order to escape Fares and the henchmen. Furthermore, another confusion is caused by the jealous wife of Pivert, Germaine (Suzy Delair), and her trial to get to her husband whom she suspects to have left her at the day of the marriage of their daughter with a "Therese Leduc", is also conceived in the form of road-trip, thus here we have a forth plot-line. One really has to watch this movie several times - not because it is so complicated, but because in order to scoop out the tremendous potential of truly effective humor that is in it. This film is doubtlessly De Funes greatest performance ever, he pulls out all the stops which he commands, there are even people saying that "Rabbi Jacob" remains to be the greatest French comedy made ever.

hasosch In "The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob", Louis De Funes can apply all his talents: Not only his notorious fast-talking that makes him even for native French speakers hard to understand, the sudden break-outs of his temper, his enormous capability for slapstick which included for him playing whole scenes without a double, but also his wonderful pantomimic talents. In this film, his name in "Pivert" (which sounds a bit like "pervert"), this is the bird pee-wit, and whenever Victor Pivert is asked about his name, he feels urged to imitate the bird in a pantomimic manner, whereby his acting gets every time more insane. De Funes played his movies with such an intensity that he suffered several heart attacks before his last one killed him in 1983. One of his sons, a heart-surgeon, should be constantly on the set. Did the Funes really play? French people say that the three greatest French comedians of all times were (in alphabetic order) Bourvil, Fernandel and Louis De Funes. In the films of Bourvil and Fernandel you can laugh with a warm and happy heart, but in the films of Louis De Funes you cry out with insane laughter. He was too short time of earth, but was in over 100 movies and in approximately 50 in the main role. And now look: In the USA there are exactly 2 of his movies available: "The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob" and "Delusions of Grandeur", both directed by the French comedy giant Gérard Oury. A third movie, again by Oury, you can buy from a New York video place for approximately 50 dollars on VHS: "La Grande Vadrouille" - by many considered one of the best French movies ever. And that's it. Only from the 6 "Le Gendarme De St-Tropez" movies which made De Funes internationally known, not one is on a DVD that would play on an average American player. For "The Gendarme in New York" you must pay fantasy prices for the only VHS recording that is long out of print. It is beyond human understanding that De Funes works are not available outside of France.

Elektrum Give Louis de Funes a good role and the freedom to go nuts, and you will have a good movie. In Rabbi Jacob, Funes is the owner of an industrial plant who "knows that the people like to be lied to" ("mais il AIME qu'on lui mente, le peuple!"). His character is intolerant of Arabs, Jews, Blacks, etc. At one point during the story, however, he must take on the identity of a Rabbi and try to pass himself off as Jewish in order to save his hide. With him is an Arab, who must do the same. If you've seen de Funes before, I'm sure you can imagine the hilarious scenes that arise out of this predicament.