Synopsis
A satire of the Great American Way, with Lemonade Joe a "clean living" gunfighter who drinks only Kola-Loca Lemonade and convinces everyone else in town (with his gun skills) that all "real men" drink ONLY lemonade!
Lemonade Joe
1964 ‘Limonádový Joe aneb Koňská opera’ Directed by Oldřich Lipský
Cast
Karel Fiala Miloš Kopecký Rudolf Deyl Květa Fialová Olga Schoberová Bohuš Záhorský Josef Hlinomaz Karel Effa Waldemar Matuška Eman Fiala Vladimír Menšík Jiří Lír Jiří Steimar Jaroslav Štercl Oldřich Lukeš Alois Dvorský Miloš Nedbal Juraj Herz Jiří Jelínek Jiří Schulz Jaroslav Mareš Antonín Šůra Viktor Očásek Rudolf Cortés Stanislav Litera Rudolf Princ Jan Pohan Miloš Vavruška Vlastimil Bedrna Show All…
Director
Additional Directing
Executive Producer
Writers
Original Writer
Editor
Cinematography
Additional Photography
Production Design
Set Decoration
Special Effects
Choreography
Composers
Songs
Sound
Costume Design
Makeup
Studio
Country
Language
Alternative Titles
Lemonade Joe or Horse Opera, Τζο, ο Λεμονάδας, Joe ο Λεμονάδας
Popular reviews
More-
Unhinged and utterly wonderful, Lemonade Joe is a clever spoof of western tropes going all the way back to the days of silents, shot through with song, joyful lunacy, and a wry mocking of the capitalist thirst for profit. Featuring the toning effects of the early 1900s, undercranked fights, rapid editing, and wild camera angles, the film's techniques are as kitchen sink as its tropes, all to its great benefit.
Our titular hero (Played by Karel Fiala, whose performance is perfect and who even does his own singing! A king.) is a blonde, white-clad beacon of good in crime-worn Arizona, a figure that regularly arrives out of nowhere to save the day and order Kolaloka, the lemonade he says cures…
-
Colorful parody that can be easily ranked among the comedy giants. Way before Mel Brooks ever thought of his concepts, Lemonade Joe came as an avant-garde blast that mocked American westerns and even hidden racial issues (again, just like Brooks did) but in a less subtle manner and with extraordinary camera tricks, innovative slapstick comedy, different tints to create scenarios, a parody on western violence, a mockery of the inhuman abilities of the typical western "hero", and a furious editing. Who needs CGI these days?
99/100
-
1st Oldřich Lipský
I seem to have bad luck picking films for my friends to watch. Last time, it was Minbo, and that generated more bafflement than anything else. In choosing Lemonade Joe, I thought I'd have something so off the wall that it had to be a success. But Lemonade Joe was more baffling than delirious fun this first viewing. True, there are some inspired moments, but I'm still not sure how well this cocktail went down. Lemonade Joe tells the story of the titular cowboy, a teetotaller and the best shot in the Old West, as he comes up against the Whiskey-loving Badman brothers and falls in love with Winnifred Goodman, the daughter of a temperance evangelist. In…
-
Lemonade Joe presents a one of a kind paradox and it is literally something never seen before. Described best as a Czechoslovakian parody poking fun at American Westerns and filmed in an avant garde style. Is there any other film that one can possibly name to match this kind of unforeseen mash up? I certainly cannot.
The experimental visuals are the best aspect of the film and it is so strange and alien to see them used in the form of the Western genre. Oldrich Lipský applies color tinting marvelously and in such strange patterns. At first it appears to be utilized in the same fashion that silent films did to convey different times of day or locations(i.e. blue for…
-
-
”Are the nights cold?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then I should put on …” (dramatic zoom in on Lemonade Joe’s face) ”… my warm woollies.”This is a deeply ridiculous movie, but almost always because it’s trying to be. Somehow both an ode to and parody of American westerns all the way from the silent era to the 1950s, Oldřich Lipský’s Limonádový Joe aneb Koňská opera might compare best to something like Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas, if it were a musical comedy taking potshots at American-style capitalism. The structure is similar, with escalating tensions between good and bad forces, an overblown bad guy with multiple disguises, and spectacular set pieces a-plenty.
That’s not all. You could pick out “wink and a nod” references…
-
☆"Why, a man who's worth his meat // Drinks his whisky and drinks it neat."☆
March to the West 2022 – Film #7 of 31 – Comedy Week!
I have a couple haphazard theme weeks for this March, one of which commences tonight: Comedy Week! I'm not sure if I'll like all these films, as last year this week yielded some mixed results, but we've got a real winner out of the gate, the ridiculous and chaotic Western musical satire from Czechoslovakia, Limonádový Joe aneb Koňská opera ["Lemonade Joe, or the Horse Opera"].
Lemonade Joe has become a cult classic for a reason: it is absolutely bonkers. Hilarious, unhinged, and most importantly actually accurate to the period detail and themes…
-
This relentless and hilarious musical send-up of the American Western written by Brdecka is one of the most popular works in Czech film history. Lemonade Joe follows a soft drink–swigging gunfighter as he tries to steer the sinful residents of Arizona’s Stetson City away from alcohol and toward the health benefits offered in Kolaloka (a parody of Coca-Cola). The satire was adapted from versions of the character created by Brdecka across various media, including print, radio, and the theater. The visual gags are reminiscent both of the 1920s American silent slapstick and the colorful era of the swinging ’60s, including its inspired music and songs (the full title in Czech calls it a Horse Opera). Based on the same source, Jiri Trnka made the short puppet film Song of the Prairie (1949), showing in his retrospective with the feature Bayaya.
-
A Czech New Wave parody of the American classic White Hat Westerns from the 1930s presented in an avant-garde style comedy????? Fuck yeah you know this is amazing. I wish desperately I could give this a 5/5, because I’m so many ways it looked like it was going to be for me, but then it pulled a classic Czech/general European artsy out of touch move and had a completely unnecessary looooooooong scene of blackface.
Not blackface as commentary, or satire of depictions of race in American Westerns, it’s just honestly blackface. A character simply paints themselves pitch black with white lips to trick everyone that they are a jazz musician, and then gets called the N-word. It’s an incredibly unfortunate…
-
Oh man, this is such a delight to look at. This film is art in every sense, it's so hyper stylized and exaggerated and surreal that it makes you wonder why the hell its look hasn't been reproduced over and over and over. It's honestly like 60s pop art come to life.
The movie itself has some genuine laugh out loud moments and some pretty excellent satire on advertising and capitalism. It pokes fun at westerns too of course, though I honestly get the sense there's a lot of love in its parody.
The only problem with this film is a scene that could have been straight out of a Lonely Island youtube video if it wasn't for the, uh,…
-
-
This film was pretty insane. It never cooled down, it just went for it balls to the wall, there’s some great moments of cartoonishness but also some moments that really don’t work for me. That runtime also feels really long because of lack of some variety. I love the different colour palettes, askew shots that I’m sure influenced a few notable modern directors. I also really liked Karel Fiala’s performance as the title character. He brings off an entertaining suaveness without ever being a prick. Lemonade Joe definitely has a lot of flaws but there’s a lot I enjoyed about it and I respect its place in Czech cinema and it’s just so bizarre.
60