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Excellent, Without a doubt!!

best movie i've ever seen.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

I like lots of oddball movies. I even liked Spaceballs. Kentucky Fried Movie was great! I would give it a 10. The Naked Gun series, Airplane series.. anything Abrams/Zucker will do quite well for me, thank you. But this one was a complete miss. It was slow. The acting was bad. The actors seemed like they were just there to display a stereotype of some character type. But it was embarrassing to watch.Maybe I am reviewing this from the wrong time of the society. Maybe it was easier to take "back then". I am also unable to watch "Amos & Andy" TV shows now. I used to love them on radio and on TV. But now I am unable to watch the shows. The character types are too stereotypical and embarrassing. Oh, well, just my opinion. I did not finish this one and already deleted it. Won't try again. If you waste your time on this one, it won't be my fault. I would give a 0 but it is not available.

This movie is stunningly overrated. By today's standards it plays like Blaxploitation way down at the racist end of the spectrum.And Mel Brooks is not in it. Not THE Mel Brooks. Some nobody with the same name has a bit part, so they put "Starring Mel Brooks" on the packaging.Robert Downey, Jr.'s father was not an underground auteur. He was just an incompetent who made bad movies.The only thing this movie is good for is to demonstrate how desperate the film industry was in the late Sixties. They had no idea how to reach audiences, so they threw money at junk like "Putney Swope." Luckily, they also threw a little money at much better films, such as "Easy Rider" and "MASH."

Writer & director Robert Downey, Sr., a pioneer of the underground film movement in the 1960s, satirized the New York Madison Avenue advertising world with his avant-garde comedy "Putney Swope." Downey doesn't confine his ridicule to advertising, but tackles black militant culture, the dynamics in Hollywood's portrayal of race, the elite white power structure, and character of corruption in any power struggle. As audacious and ambitious as "Putney Swope" strives to be, it qualifies as a terrible film, amateurishly made on a shoe-string budget with a no-name cast and humor that lacks hilarity. Everything about this movie reeks with improvisation. "Putney Swope" stirred up controversy during its initial release with its politically incorrect handling of race issues and consumer culture. Like most Marx Brothers movies, the plot is thin, providing an excuse for Downey's anecdotal gags, most of which are terrible.The chairman of a prestigious Madison Avenue ad agency dies during a board meeting. Before the body has been removed, the board holds a secret ballot vote to determine who will replace him. Each member understands that they are forbidden to vote for himself. Sheer accident occurs when everyone votes for the token black member, Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson), since none thought anybody would cast a ballot for him. Swope pink slips all but one of the white executives, surrounds himself with black, pistol packing employees, and renames the firm "Truth and Soul Advertising." Swope decides to alter the face of American advertising. He refuses to accept clients whose products are alcohol, tobacco, or war toys. Swope's clients stage an exodus after he becomes the CEO, and grandstanding attracts a new line-up of clients that show up at his office lugging bags of money and prepared to suffer abuse from Swope's militant employees. Swope exploits his African-American staff, too, ruthlessly appropriating their ideas after he fires them and conjures up a number of offensive advertising campaigns, all of which are hailed as a 'new wave' of marketing genius. Incredibly, Swope's conservatism proves successful but the agency becomes the target of government operatives who argue Swope's advertising tactics constitute "a threat to the national security." The high point of this black & white, 85-minute comedy are the television commercials shot in color. Unfortunately, Downey doesn't know when to cut off these ads that consistently start out cleverly but wear out their welcome. The funniest part of "Putney Swope" involves our eponymous protagonist's dealings with U.S. President Mimeo in Washington D.C. (Pepi Hermine), a marihuana-toking midget with a Kissinger-like Teutonic adviser (Larry Wolf) spouting tasteless jokes while trying to convince Swope to come up with an advertising campaign for his new car, the Borman 6.

I heard about this movie when it came out but never got to see it. It must have played on the weekend I was busy. It finally was released to DVD and I bought a copy.There is no way to rate this film. I have no way of predicting how anyone will respond to it: love, hate, detest, indifferent. Should you watch this movie your response will be somewhere in there.I would have to say that it is a film for its time. A great deal of what it was satirizing at the time has changed so much that it no longer has any relevance in that sense. I remember at that time one of the demands of young movie goers was that films, indeed everything involving the culture, should be relevant. That was the 'buzz word.' This film was relevant alright, but almost forty years later I have to ask, "relevant to what?" I'm glad I finally got to see it. This film is touted as a comedy. I didn't laugh once while viewing it, though I did appreciate the acerbic wit. Some of it I found downright crude, though I'm sure that was intentional.I will wait awhile and view it again some time. I have a feeling that I will get different things from it. I may even laugh at the stuff that's intended to be funny.Would you enjoy this film? I don't know. Should you watch it? Oh yes, you should.