Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Knox Morris The first time I saw "The Firemen's Ball" I found myself bored in the last quarter of the movie. But something drew me back. Nevertheless I still loved it, and knew I had experienced an incomparable piece of cinema. The second time I loved it even more, but still found a portion, albeit much less, of the movie tedious. This is the charm of "The Firemen's Ball," famously banned "forever" and Milos Forman's swan song to Czech filmmaking. It is not, in the sense of the word, a riotous comedy. There are a lot of clever sight gags and funny dialogue, but it is a matter of preference whether you prefer endless little laughs or limited big laughs. I've seen the film multiple times, and each time I see it I love it even more. It's like a cake that gets better with more and more birthdays, or rather a lovely painting that improves with touch-ups. The source for why I love this movie becomes increasingly evident with these viewings. For one, Forman structures a comedy like you should: Disperse laughs (don't aim for just the big ones and then put in boring filler as an excuse for narrative), don't leave certain parts silent so you can hear the next joke (some people might see it more than once and often what made them roll on the floor initially might later lose its edge), and lastly make sure the humor is versatile (it can appeal to both smart people and admittedly dumb people). Forman captures, as he does with all of his films, the essence of human nature. Essentially, it is a parody of the ordinary life of an everyman. There is nothing funny about this life in first person. But in third person, life is a hilarious charade of nonsense. Fans of the genre might remember the tagline on the poster of Blake Edwards' The Party: "If you've ever been to a wilder party — you're under arrest!" The party in this movie is absolutely crazy. But, seriously, all the stuff in this movie usually happens at every party, it's just how Forman chooses to adapt the camera to real life is what makes it funny. Through this cinematic filter, the ultimate joke of life is revealed. The firemen are numbskulls, the ball is out of control, the attendees are psychotic, and the 86 year old man (who his colleagues treat like a lobotomized dog) is the ultimate expression of honesty. If the Czechs had been a little less shallow, they might have realized this movie puts everybody on the same, unsinkable boat.

gavin6942 The fire department in a small town is having a big party when the ex-boss of the department celebrates his 86th birthday. The whole town is invited but things don't go as planned. Someone is stealing the prizes to the lottery and the candidates for the Miss Fire-Department beauty contest are neither willing nor particularly beautiful.The film has widely been interpreted as a satire on the East European Communist system, and it was "banned forever" in Czechoslovakia following the Soviet invasion of 1968. Forman reflected that the film was not intended to be a satire of any particular government, saying, "I didn't want to give any special message or allegory. I wanted just to make a comedy knowing that if I'll be real, if I'll be true, the film will automatically reveal an allegorical sense. That's a problem of all governments, of all committees, including firemen's committees. That they try and they pretend and they announce that they are preparing a happy, gay, amusing evening or life for the people. And everybody has the best intentions... But suddenly things turn out in such a catastrophic way that, for me, this is a vision of what's going on today in the world." And he is right. This is not anti-Soviet or anti-Czech. It plays just as well in the United States as a satire on bureaucracy, or could be seen without any satire at all... why not just a group of bumbling men? When Abbott and Costello pretend to be something, is it an insult to that profession? Of course not.

poe426 I'm sure that there are those who will look at this film as little more than a "busman's holiday" tale (a "busman's holiday," for those of you who aren't familiar with the term, refers to a bus driver who works all week driving a bus only to end up spending his days off riding the bus), but my own "political awareness" came in November of 1963. I was just a kid, but I remember it all very well: my mother crying, my father (a World War Two vet) staring at the television coverage like he'd been beaned with a hammer. My "political education" resumed in 1968 with not one but two more murders. In an age when we can only look to comedians like Bill Maher, John Stewart, Louis Black and documentary filmmakers like Michael Moore for the truth, THE FIREMEN'S BALL comes across as much, much more than a busman's holiday...

N. N. "Horí, Má Panenko" is a very intelligently lain out film about people - people in general.This kind of comedy always comes in handy when there's a huge public effort underway to turn them into heroes. The lay out is intelligent, because it focuses on old people, of whom such propaganda would speak of as unpleasant residues and who are hence free to behave in any unpleasant way.Old people from a small village somewhere in the province. That makes it even safer.So, after establishing that there's enough room to deflect any criticism of doing that what one is actually doing - namely using the unpleasant residues as a mirror image of the so called heroic elements of society.And what to say, people are nasty! They steal and portray themselves as St. Martins at the same time. They steal and make those who suspect them of that look like senile paranoiacs. They envy others property and hide it behind well meant care for them. Essentially, it's a film about people who want to have that what they like for themselves without thinking about other people. They don't always get what they want, but they always want the best, even if they are ever so small.The high light of the film is the fate of the lottery, "Moe" should have watched this, at least he'd kept his trousers then. But though the "Simpsons" film is funny, the original is even funnier.