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Gladiatress (2004) More at IMDbPro »

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33 out of 45 people found the following comment useful :-
It's not so bad, 29 October 2004
7/10
Author: Elliott Manley from Near the locations for this movie, England

OK, I had several advantages in watching Gladiatress...

- I had read the terrible reviews and had the lowest possible expectations, so I wasn't going to be disappointed.

- I watched it with a glass of good wine and in the company of two friends who had happy memories of their fun time as extras (and we even managed to catch glimpses of them) - I recognised every single location shot - all within a few miles of my home So, you have to weigh this when I say we all enjoyed it. We all laughed aloud lots of times.

It also looks great. Much higher production values than you'd expect for a movie of this type. Partly this is down having borrowed equipment and costumes from the multi zillion dollar Gladiator. But it is also a well-made movie in its own right (OK, it's not Once upon a Time in the West - but neither is it On The Buses).

And Sally Phillips is just scrummy. She can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. And, apparently, she is a very nice person too.

So... this is never going to be on anyone's Top Ten, but give it a chance. I think some of the negativity it's had is completely over the top. I hope it does get a theatrical release - I think it deserves that.

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22 out of 32 people found the following comment useful :-
"Smack The Gladiator"- seriously underrated, 18 February 2005
9/10
Author: music2 from United Kingdom

The girls of UK comedy TV show "Smack The Pony" take on the "Gladiator" story- like an answer to the lads of "Spaced" doing "Shaun Of The Dead" (except that "Gladiatress" was filmed at the same time, or possibly even first?) It's a real shame that this film got overlooked, and possibly even buried, in the shadow of "Shaun Of The Dead" as it's a funny film in it's own right. There are a lot of parallels in the style between the two films though. For a start, I was falling off my seat with laughter in both films.

Like "Shaun..", a lot of the jokes wouldn't be funny if you had only ever seen them written down- a lot of the real comedy is in the delivery. For example the line "I don't even know where Rome is... s***..."- dull written down but laugh-out-loud when you hear Sally Phillips saying it. Also like "Shaun..", it's really vulgar in parts but never too much, and even though you don't expect to, by the end you're empathising with characters you thought at the beginning of the film you couldn't possibly like.

My only criticisms would be that the first ten minutes are a bit shaky- which might explain why this film has got some poor reviews, as it doesn't leave a good first impression. Also, Doon Mackichan is, surprisingly, a bit weak through some parts of the movie, which is a shame as Fiona Allen and Sally Phillips are on top form. Oh, and the tag-line "does my Gluteus Maximus look big in this?" isn't funny, and it under-sells the film. But these are all minor points, and don't really detract from the entertainment.

The reviewer who commented on the "odd feminism" in the film has, in my opinion, firmly grabbed the wrong end of his stick (or has problems listening to women as equals). If he was expecting a sexy women-in-leather soft porn, this film happily isn't that. It isn't a chick-flick either- you don't have to be one gender or the other to laugh at this film.

In a nutshell, if you liked "Shaun Of The Dead", and/or "Smack The Pony" on TV, this is worth hunting down a copy of. I eventually had to get a legitimate DVD copy from the Netherlands in order to see it- this film is too good to go unnoticed!

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18 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
A great uplifting comedy about tits and bravery, 14 April 2005
7/10
Author: Svante Börjesson from Sweden

Not brilliant, but definitely worth watching. British humor at it's almost best and a very feminine type of humor to, in the great tradition of Absolutely Faboulous and Bridget Jones. Girl Power comedy. I think it's wonderful that we have come that far that women can be portrayed as pathetic and miserable but still sympathetic, as they are in movies like Gladiatress and Bridget Jones Diaries. It's womens turn to be allowed to be ridiculous - a domain which has been strictly male dominated until recently.

Above all I like that the movie show how superior, in practically everything, except for farting, the Romans were. They were cleaner, ate better, behaved better and above all, they locked better. "What have the Romans ever given to us" - Life of Brian. British men don't get much credit in this one. The movies heretical mixture of past and present also makes it one of those few really good comedies that doesn't take itself too seriously without becoming just silly and boring.

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10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Two Celtic princesses endeavour to rescue their sister from the Romans who have taken her to Gaul., 29 November 2007
9/10
Author: Jamie_Kidman from Australia

The humour in this film elicits a full range of responses from mild smirks to belly laughs, if you have a reasonable sense of the ridiculous and are willing not to take yourself or the film too seriously. There are a lot of sight gags and slapstick humour, but also a lot of comments made in an undertone that are easy to miss if you're not really concentrating or become bemused by the accents. I suspect a lot of the negative comments came from males who didn't see as much female flesh as the cover might have led them to anticipate. This is definitely a film that women will enjoy as much as men;I will recommend it to my adult daughters. People with no interest in the era depicted will probably miss out on a lot of the jokes. If you like both Monty Python and the Carry On films, you would probably enjoy this film. Some people might find it stupid, I don't see that as a fault. The music is great.

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8 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Very silly, very funny but probably to subtle for most., 3 April 2008
9/10
Author: chatfan from Amsterdam

This is a very funny movie. Just finished watching it and can only say I was pleasantly surprised. It is full of little jokes, but unlike the moronic "meet the Spartans", these jokes are clever. Typical English wordplay and silly modern day parallels and plays on pretty much every cultural stereotype. It seems like this movie is full of strong fun roles for women and the guys just don't really count.

Italians speaka lika da pizzamanna.. its actually funny to see in a movie like this and Celtic warrior women looking for love in a very "special" way.

Considering the crap thats been coming out of Hollywood and labeled "comedy" its hard to imagine this one got overlooked.

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15 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :-
Cover better than entire movie, 26 November 2006
1/10
Author: deamond9 from Australia

On the video cover, there's a back view of a girl in a short Roman skirt, and some text which says, "Does my Gluteus Meximus look big in this?"

That one costume, and that one joke, is better than anything in the entire movie. I swear, it made me wonder of it's so much to ask that watching a movie be at least as entertaining as looking at the cover.

All the women, even in the actual arena, are fully clothed in baggy fur. The sets are obviously cheep, jokes are just bad, it seems to have been made by people who don't know anything about movies.

There's one good scene;

In this movie the Tpits are depicted as always wearing severed rotting human heads around their necks like necklaces. In one scene the 3 (three) main characters are disguising themselves as 2 (two) Tpits. The first one has an actual head around her neck, but the second one has the third one standing inside her clothes pretending to be a severed head.

I recommend instead;

The Arena

Sparticus

Monty Python's Holy grail

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9 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Not great, not horrible - more like mediocre, 12 August 2006
4/10
Author: sarastro7 from Denmark

It's funny how people apparently either hate or love this movie. Every user comment either gives it a "1" rating or above a "7" - it's a good thing we have the average, then, which in this case for once is actually very accurate: this movie is worth about a "4".

It has funny elements, though not many for a movie that's supposed to be a comedy. The portrayal of Celtic-Britannic culture (incl. some Picts) is entertaining and even a little educational, and the movie's main strength lies in its realistic portrayal of what would happen to someone who tried to rescue a family member from being kidnapped by the Romans: she becomes a slave herself.

The funniest thing about the movie is probably the way we have Worthaboutapig crossing the English channel and then instantly thinking that the Roman colony she finds there ("Boulogne" = Paris) is actually Rome itself. For some ignorant clan member who's never been to the continent before, and certainly never seen the capital of a major civilization (to say nothing of a map), that's actually extremely realistic. And the anachronistic line "When in Rome...!" just has that extra little punch, when we know that she isn't actually in Rome after all.

There are a bunch of details to like in this movie - the production values, for instance, and that terrifically nonchalant German gladiator, Schlaffwaffe -, but it's just not funny enough, overall. It's too understated, has very few scenes approaching the memorable, and just strikes me as too self-indulgent. Fart and crotch jokes abound, which are tasteless and unfunny. The characters are cardboards. As a whole the movie is a disappointment, but at least it marginally holds your interest throughout. That, at least, is something.

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9 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Total waste of DVD, 14 March 2006
1/10
Author: Martin (imbd-114) from Netherlands

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This movie is awful, don't waist a perfectly good disc and the time to watch this please ! OK, so I got misled by the cover, featuring one of the three sisters, in a Gladiatress outfit... Which she never wares, not even a second! So don't fall for that one. Then there's a very thin story about three sisters. The oldest one is the most normal (and 'cute') one and about to become queen of some country in the UK. (We're talking Caesar-era here). Then there is the stupid blond sister, and the savage, abandoned sister. The about-to-become-queen gets kidnapped by the Romans, so the stupid one is sent out to save her. Se gets the savage sister to come with her and... that's about it. There are a few minutes of 'gladiatress' action, that isn't funny, exciting or sexy at all. So this movie totally missed it if you ask me..

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12 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
Worth About A Pig Roolz, 18 February 2006
10/10
Author: warlock-39 from United Kingdom

This Little piece of humour history will have you rolling about the floor laughing your head off - oops - perhaps not quite the right choice of words but.....

If you want something original that isn't the same old tired plot line, with fresh actors and actresses who deliver their lines with sheer delight - then this is for you - Be different - take a chance - you wont regret it!!!

I think that so many of the new films are all taking the "safe" way forward, and I cant blame them, but taking a real risk on a totally different idea shows conviction and courage - and I feel that the whole team that worked on this deserve credit as I'm sure you will too!!!! Regards Dave

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Hide it from your girlfriend, 27 May 2009
8/10
Author: sheenafilm from Hamburg, Germany

The idiotic cover almost stopped me from watching the movie, because it seemed to indicate this could be moronic rubbish like "Meet the Spartans" again, but fortunately it's something completely different. First, they really got their historical background right. The explanation how the Romans could conquer Gallia and Britannia - not simply by brute force, but let proxies fight their wars for them and fight tribes separately which were enemies of each other - is given better than in most serious movies about that period. Asking the question "were some slaves actually satisfied with their primitive life without any rights"? like Worthaboutapig is probably more realistic than the heroic rebels of Spartacus movies, since Spartacus was the exception not the rule when it comes to self-sacrifice, but it's all quite politically incorrect to ask, I bet.

This is one of the funniest movies I've watched in the last couple of years. It's dominated by three women who fight against all odds ("I must warn you, I'm a Celtic warrior princess. I can kill a man in 17 different ways. 18, if you include cooking") which is of course unusual in the genre but works extremely well since their characters are so extremely different. Hide the DVD from your girlfriend, though, it may give her ideas...

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