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>> Big yuks at the 2nd annual International Comedy Film Festival

By MATTHEW HAYS

Programming a comedy film festival couldn't be an easy thing. After all, comedies have seen better years--particularly American comedies, which have been sullied and dragged down by all those Saturday Night Live alumni, stretching their dreary 10-minute sketches into uninspiring feature-length rot.

Thus the organizers of Montreal's second annual International Comedy Film Fest should get high praise for this year's lineup. They've managed to nab a Montreal premiere, Anjelica Huston's Agnes Brown, as well as Damien O'Donnell's striking family melodrama with comic overtones, East Is East, while also presenting a weighty cross-section of movies from the past.

Understandably, the fest programme includes some heavy hitters, like Woody Allen for example. Two distinct phases in his oeuvre are represented by Zelig and Sleeper. The former is Allen's mockumentary about a fictional personality from the '30s, who has chameleon-like powers allowing him to fit into any situation. A droll comedy, Zelig isn't quite the landmark knee-slapper that Sleeper is. This is one of Allen's funniest, with he and Diane Keaton playing outlaws in a future world gone wrong. Allen delivers some of his funniest physical shtick here, and his skewering of the sci-fi genre is also dead-on.

Along with Allen, comedy legend Peter Sellers will also be on view with one of the zanier Inspector Clouseau sequels, Blake Edwards' The Pink Panther Strikes Again. One of Mel Brooks' finest features, Blazing Saddles, will also ride again. And the ultimate sight-gag comedy, The General, is screening; for those who haven't seen Buster Keaton's 1927 classic, mark this down as mandatory viewing.

Far-out casting calls have also been made. Witness Airplane!, the first in a long line of gag-a-minute films, which features Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges and Robert Hays in an entirely astute sendup of the Airport cycle of Disaster Movies. It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is an epic comedy from '63 that doesn't always hit the mark, but this road movie features such an unusual group of actors--including Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Peter Falk and Jimmy Durante--as to warrant a viewing. :

The International Comedy Film Festival screens from this Friday, March 24 to April 2. All screenings at the Parisien. Tickets are $5, $40 for a booklet of ten and $55 for a f estival pass. See repertory listings for complete schedule. Info: www.cinemacomique.com