S.P.Q.R.: 2,000 and a Half Years Ago

S.P.Q.R.: 2,000 and a Half Years Ago (1994) is an Italian comedy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Carlo Vanzina. The film drops two ordinary Romans into first-century BC politics — senators in togas, gladiators in the arena, and a level of bribery that would have felt entirely familiar to any Italian citizen watching in 1994.

Christian De Sica and Massimo Boldi play the hapless commoners caught in a corruption scandal that mirrors Tangentopoli, the real-life investigation then dismantling Italy's political class. Leslie Nielsen appears as a crooked senator whose backroom dealings keep the plot spinning. The humor runs broad and fast, leaning on the pair's long-standing comic chemistry and the joke that absolutely nothing has changed across two millennia.

Released at the height of the Clean Hands prosecutions that toppled multiple governments, the film was part farce, part pointed commentary. Stream S.P.Q.R. (1994) online on iFILM.