Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

Diagonaldi Very well executed

Ploydsge just watch it!

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

david-sarkies Interesting movie. It is an English Comedy and seems to be John Cleese first appearance for the credits say "introducing John Cleese" yet the movie seems to have been made after the Monty Python movies. Whatever the reason it is not really important.Splitting Heirs is really nothing more than a stereotype comedy movie. At the start two people meet and in an unfortunate accident, then a duke dies. What ends up happening is that one of the two people is the legal heir and he becomes duke. In reality, the other person really is the duke because the babies were switched at birth (which is sort of covered in the movie). As such, one guy starts running around trying to kill the other, but when he believes he has killed him, he really hits a guilt trip. That is where the twist starts.The comedy of this movie is very much a comedy of errors. It deals with someone trying to kill somebody else and always missing his target. It is this that takes the major part of the movie. There is also a bit of slapstick, a bit of sexual humour, a bit of linguistic humour which includes funny names, and just unusual twists that have a comic revelation. Being a British movie with two actors from Monty Python (Eric Idle and John Cleese) there is also a poke at the French.John Cleese, now he is cool. He plays a lawyer, in fact he plays quite a mad lawyer. In the law firm his office is in the basement which means he's pretty bad (and pretty cheap). He sees an opportunity and he takes it. He decides that he wants to become the duke's lawyer but the real duke wants nothing of it. Unfortunately, Cleese is just too stupid to realise this.Splitting Heirs is okay but not fantastic. I didn't find it that funny, except for the beginning; that to me is a sign of a not too good comedy movie. The comedy is based entirely on trying to kill the false duke and this gets dull after awhile. The sexual innuendos are non existent, namely because they are just more blatant. I don't find a mother trying to sleep with her son even though she doesn't know at all funny. John Cleese is good and if you like slapstick, then okay, but honestly, you could probably waste your time better elsewhere.

dreeze I rented this movie on VHS in the late 90's and somehow I never quite got to returning it to the store. Lacking the absurd humor of the Monty Python era, as a huge Idle and Cleese fan I was at first a bit disappointed. Eric Idle had produced what seemed at first a rather shallow comedy flick. Still, it had it's moments and at the end of the first viewing it left me satisfied, yet no more than that.In the following days however, I found myself watching this movie over and over again, getting to love it more and more each time. The brilliance in this movie is not in the script (a rather basic story about a personality mix-up) nor the usual Python-esquire absurdity (almost completely missing, except for the notion of an American as a British Duke) but rather in the main characters themselves. The American educated Duke-to-be, the Duchess Mummy who is so much of a man-eater it defies each sign of royalty, the gold-digging yet promiscuous fiancée, the scheming cook and the mad lawyer. Not to mention the blond haired, blue eyed Asian. Each of them has a sort of second layer to their personality which is so absurd, yet intriguing, that simply playing their characters is enough for the actors to make this a memorable appearance.Rick Moranis especially surprised me, if only by not being his obnoxious self.Nowadays, whenever I switch on my old VCR i get to wonder which tape will be in it, Splitting Heirs or Jackie Brown. Either way, the next time it will be the other way around.

bjjones1960 The movie reminded me of one of my favorites - Kind Hearts and Coronets - except instead of killing several relatives in the line of succession as Alec Guiness's character did, Eric Idle's character was trying several methods to kill one. Also, Eric Idle strongly resembled every ancestor in the Duke's portrait gallery much like Alec Guiness looked just like every member of his family in Kind Hearts and Coronets (since he was playing all the roles). John Cleese was so funny describing how the new Duke could meet with an accident and then listing possible accidents which included poison mixed with scotch to disguise both the taste and cause of death. Eric Idle's character was very likable, and even though he's much older than Kitty, his smile and charm made them seem like they could be a couple. The whole cast was all star - Cleese, Idle, Barbara Hershey, Catherine Zeta Jones, Rick Moranis, and like Monty Python movies, there are loads of quotable quotes.

Sebastian Carr I can't imagine what the fans of this film have managed to find to entertain them. No plot, poor acting and a transatlantic ambition which was ill-conceived, combine to make this one of the worst films I have ever seen. At a guess, I would say that those involved were looking to exploit the US popularity of the Monty Python team, yet even a mediocre film like "A Fish Called Wanda" made some effort to write a script that, whilst fairly offensive to Brits looking to see a film about themselves, didn't treat the country as a theme park. This film doesn't make you wonder how so many talented people became involved in such an awful project. It makes you wonder whether those people are very talented after all.