User reviews

....and is stretched out to feature length via an overabundance of terrible, scenerey-chewing performances and witless ethnic humor. Worth a look, I suppose, as Billy Crystal's first film; we all got to start somewhere (he looks like Steve Guttenberg here). * out of 4.

I saw this movie three times when it first came out. I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I laughed at the antics and thought "the guy from 'Hollywood Squares'" was hilarious. I was ten years old at the time. I had no idea what the story or the humor was all about--I just loved watching adults act stupid (what kid wouldn't?) I watched it again a few years ago and, although there is plenty of slapstick, most of the humor is really desperate and unfunny. And the premise is completely bizarre, and not very funny. I guess Joan Rivers was going for the "all bets are off" humor of a Mel Brooks film. The movie pokes fun at all races and religions. The humor borders offensive, and is not successful because it's simply not funny (the image of God at the end saying "Oh my God..it's a girl!"--what is funny about this?) Irreverence is not always funny, as many comedy filmmakers in the '90s would discover. Why my parents took me to see this remains a mystery that is still discussed on occasion.

It's been nearly 30 years, and I STILL hate everyone involved in this movie. It remains the worst movie I've ever seen.

Before seeing this, I never much minded Rivers, one way or the other. After seeing this movie, I have an allergic reaction when I accidentally see her on television.

I got dragged to this - against my better judgment - by peer pressure. However, coming out of the theater, those friends swore an oath to never again overrule my choice of movie. Nearly thirty years later, we still carry around mental scars from this movie.

On my deathbed, one of my regrets will be the time I wasted hoping that this movie might get better. It never did.

If you are ever given a choice, you would prefer putting your own eyes out to sitting though this movie.

I registered for IMDb comments just in the hope that perhaps I can warn others against viewing this movie. If I can save just one person from watching this, then my existence on this earth will have been justified.

I saw this film when it first came out in 1978, when I was a sophomore in high school. I took a date to see it. I didn't "get any," needless to say, because the film was so bad! Joan Rivers' career never tanked as badly as it deserved after making this awful, unfunny crap. In fact, unfunny isn't a severe enough term: this film is ANTI-FUNNY! You walk out feeling like any laughter that might have occurred was beaten out of you before it could happen. This isn't worth watching out of curiosity, or out of any sense of it being "so-bad-it's-good." Not even the gang at MST3K could've made this worth watching! The fact that Billy Crystal's career survived this early suicide attempt is a miracle.

Last summer I went to a local dirt-mall to browse through used VHS tapes. I came across this and went "Oh wow! Billy Crystal in a Joan Rivers movie! And Billy's pregnant!". So I got it. Now, I have never seen any movie written by Joan Rivers, but I knew she was funny. Oh boy......what a queen of comedy she is.......

I love slapstick and stupid humor; I love "The Jerk" with Steve Martin, so you can't accuse me of being high-brow. This movie is non-stop stupidity ranging from "what in the Hell?" to "Oh, Joan (shake head)". Now, it's been a while since I've watched it (and I've tried my best to erase this movie from my mind) but the scene that sticks out to me was Billy Barty in blackface. That was the reaching point for me. I was anticipating Billy Barty's cameo....and then that happens. So Joan Rivers' idea of comedy is a pregnant man and a racist midget. This movie made me question why Rivers got as famous as she did - because she truly lacks any comedic talent.

So, for the love of all that is holy, stay away from this movie. Billy Crystal didn't even save it; the whole time I felt sorry for him. And for his first staring role in a film, too! I should also mention that this is also Michael Keaton's first screen role - though his character doesn't talk and is only in it for a blink of an eye. Though fairly short for the average movie, this certainly felt more than two hours - all of which I sat through, hoping that it would get better. On top of that the quality of the video is extremely poor and it doesn't sound like they used any boom mics - which makes it harder to hear in places. Fortunately, you don't NEED to hear it - because you shouldn't be watching this in the first place.

I cannot say enough bad things about this train wreck. It is one of the few movies I've ever been tempted to walk out of. It was a bad premise to begin with, first pregnant male, but then they tried to make it a spoof. What were they spoofing all those real pregnant males??? This was the worst movie I have ever seen. If it had enough votes it would be on the IMDB bottom 100. If it was possible to give it a zero I would, and I would still feel I had given it too much credit.

It's difficult to precisely put into words the sheer awfulness of this film. An entirely new vocabulary will have to be invented to describe the complete absence of anything even remotely recognizable as 'humor' or even 'entertainment' in "Rabbit Test." So, as a small contribution to this future effort, I'd like to suggest this word:

"Hubiriffic" (adj.) A combination of 'hubristic' and 'terrific'; used to describe overly ambitious debacles like the film "Rabbit Test."

Joan Rivers and "Hollywood Squares" producer Jay Redack have severely over-reached their meager abilities to amuse in this 82-minute festival of wretchedness. Trying to put together an Airplane! style comedy with a moldy collection of gags, (Note to Joan: German doctors haven't been funny since Vaudeville) disinterred from their graves in the Catskills - that's is bad enough. But compounding this cinematic crime is River's directorial style, which can best be described as 'ugly', and a cast of once-and-future has-beens so eager to please they overplay even the weakest of throwaway gags.

Adrift in this Sargasso Sea of sap is a hapless Billy Crystal in his film debut role as the film's hapless protagonist Lionel. Watching Crystal in this pic is much like watching a blind person take a stroll in a minefield; eventually the cringe reflex becomes a semi-permanent condition as cheap joke after cheap joke blows up in his face.

I can only speculate about the sort of audience who might actually like Rabbit Test. Cabbages, mollusks and mildly retarded lizards are all likely candidates. But for self-aware, thinking humans - I'd enthusiastically recommend pouring bleach in your eyes before I'd recommend "Rabbit Test."

I really can't believe this movie is not in the IMDB worst 250, it is absolutely terrible. When I originally saw it I remember talking about it in a college class and two other people had also seen it. We were all telling other class members not to see it because it was so horrible. By the time we were done some others wanted to see it just because they could not believe anything was as bad as we were saying it was. Don't be like them, just pass this by. I'm sure everyone involved with this movie would also prefer you never see them in this movie.

Leonard Maltin compared this film to a Mel Brooks comedy. He was far too kind to Ms. Rivers, and far too cruel to Mr. Brooks. Not even the raunchiest Mel Brooks films are this tasteless, and at least they're genuinely funny. This picture deserves a place on the hundred-worst list.

Similar to "Airplane," "Naked Gun," etc...jokes, jokes, jokes, no story. I hated all those films but if you like them this should be of interest because it pre-dated "Airplane" and really deserves the credit for the genre, not "Airplane." Main draw back is the pregnant man story (Arnold couldn't make it work either). TV comedy stars make this seem more like an R-rated Love Boat. Best part: The opening animation. Unfunniest part: Director Joan Rivers' cameo. Funniest part: That "Airplane" was not much better but made the creators of that film famous.

I remember this movie when i was 13 (seems a lot of reviews are saying the same thing AGE 13!) with a group of school buddies. We all wanted to see Billy Crystal in his first movie, and fell for the typical commercial ads telling us this was a great comedy. We suffered through about 45 minutes of it, and all agreed to leave the theater. It was grotesque & tasteless, and a far cry from the ability Billy Crystal had to make us laugh, we were not laughing. I stumbled upon this review by accident, and decided to register just to tell the rest of the world what a rot-gut waste of film this was, now if you rent this, you deserve what you get, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!

In continuing to review "SNL"ers early in their movie careers, I'm back at 1978 with the review of something called Rabbit Test. This marked the theatrical feature film debut of Billy Crystal. He has an interesting career concerning "Saturday Night Live": He was in the premiere of ABC's "Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell" when that show had its initial airing in September of 1975. He was also supposed to appear in the first show of "NBC's Saturday Night"-so called because of the ABC show I mentioned-but was cut for time and he wouldn't edit his scheduled routine. Crystal later performed on it when Ron Nesson hosted. He then moved to Los Angeles where he got his big break as Jody Dallas-the first openly gay character on network TV-on "Soap". After that show's cancellation, NBC aired his "The Billy Crystal Show" but that variety show was short-lived. During the 1983-84 season, "SNL" had him guest host and when that went well, he appeared a couple more times in the season before becoming a cast member the following fall. With that out to the way, I'm now reviewing this movie which was possibly made before "Soap" since it was released during that show's first season. Billy plays a man who ends up becoming the first of his gender to get pregnant. Co-written and directed by Joan Rivers, I found myself self-consciously laughing and then cringing at many of the jokes and scenes. It's pretty bad and many of the stereotypes presented here can leave a pretty bad taste in your mouth though some of the players, like Imogene Coca or Paul Lynde, make some of it funny by their reactions or line delivery. As for Crystal, he's charismatic enough wading through what his character goes through being amusing here and there but it's easy to see why he wouldn't have a real movie career until "SNL" made him relevant again. So on that note, Rabbit Test is worth a look and nothing more. P.S. Rivers is pretty funny in her cameo as a nurse and, in another "SNL" connection, Jane Curtin's cousin Valerie also appeared here though I had to look at the cast list to find out what she played...

Don't watch this movie to laugh at its jokes - most of them are groan-worthy. Do watch this movie as a study on how bad a movie can be. If you care about movies and how they're made, you may find yourself laughing at all the poorly conceived moments in the film, and there's PLENTY. And that's a kind of entertainment, right? Thus my 4/10.

Anyway, Billy Crystal still shines in this despite the poor script and directing. He looks like a guy game for anything, and as we know, that attitude helped him a lot outside and beyond this mess (like in "Soap" and "When Harry Met Sally"). Joan Rivers never made another movie after this... surprise!?

I remember rolling in the aisles with laughter from some of the subtle (and not-so-subtle) jokes in this film: Billy Crystal yelling out "Immigration!" in order to dismiss his ESL class after everything else fails; the young girl appearing from under the kitchen table and the clergyman simply saying "Bless you, my child.". The experience of watching it for the first time was also memorable, as I saw it with my sister while living in Mexico, and a lot of the jokes went over most of the audience's head. People kept giving us strange looks while we laughed at jokes that made no sense to them at the time. I hope to find this on DVD sometime; it would make a great addition to anyone who loves film parodies and screwball comedies.

"Rabbit Test" is a film I saw at the cinema when I was 13 and I just rediscovered it in a video bargain outlet store. 25 years later I find the film still to be funny just not AS funny when I was 13. This movie is a 'comedy' and why the 'fat' jokes or religious jokes would offend anyone is beyond me. As bad as this movie seems to the people on this board who reviewed it, I wish we could return to the days when films didn't have to be so PC about their comedic tones. Just keep telling yourself, "THIS IS A COMEDY, THIS IS A COMEDY, TH......

And that one word pretty much describes this movie. True, it has it's funny moments, but I expected more from this film than what I saw. For example, the ending left many questions unanswered and what happened afterwords was left up to the imagination of those who've seen it. Plus, some of the jokes were tasteless and some were cliched. I believe they should have told more of this story than trying to cram it all in under 90 minutes, which is just what they did here. I also can't believe that this movie was described as one Mel Brooks would've directed, because I know, if left up to him, he would've done more to the script and the plot than Joan Rivers did, added more time to the movie, and explained the story better.