Southprose

Will somebody please tell Mel Brooks he isn't funny anymore?

Brooks has had some serious distractions of late, and it may not occur to him that he should rethink his comedy. After all, he's nearly eighty years old and recently suffered the loss of his wife and soul mate of over forty years, the fabulous Emmy, Oscar and Tony award winning actress Anne Bancroft ("Mrs. Robinson"). That very rare triple honor is also shared by Brooks, making this team possibly the only husband-wife couple ever to accomplish this.

I have been a fan of Mel Brooks' comedy for longer than he was married to Anne Bancroft. This is the man who created "The 2000 Year Old Man" and was a primary writer on Sid Caesar's legendary "Your Show of Shows" in the 1950's. He also co-created "Get Smart" with Buck Henry, one of the all-time TV classic 1/2-hour situation comedies. But by the late 60's and early 70's he often missed the mark and as a result mostly little old Jewish ladies were his main audience. The original "The Producers" won an Oscar in 1968 for Best Screenplay and nominated Gene Wilder for Best Supporting Actor honors, but it was a box office disappointment.

The original "The Producers" has since earned a deserved reputation as one of the funniest films of all time. The American Film Institute ranks it #13, behind "Young Frankenstein" at #11 and "Blazing Saddles" at #6. Most of Brooks' other efforts from that time period were flops and remain obscure, though "The Twelve Chairs" with Dom Deluise has its moments.

But after this creative drought, in an incredible twenty-year run of creative comedy beginning in 1974, Mel Brooks wrote, sometimes directed and even starred in a series of films that cemented his lofty place in filmic history. "Blazing Saddles", "Young Frankenstein", "High Anxiety", "History of the World: Part I" "Spaceballs", "Robin Hood, Men in Tights" and "Dracula, Dead and Loving It" all achieved at least some box office success and have continued to be shown on TV for decades to appreciative audiences. Are all so much better than the new 2005 musical version of "The Producers" that it is hard to believe the same person was responsible.

While some of the aforementioned are decidedly inferior to Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein, all had some seriously funny stuff in them and did acceptably at the box office. During that entire time he had only one real flop, 1991's "Life Stinks". I paid money to see all of them except "Stinks", which again brings up "The Producers". It stinks too. My two friends and I walked out at about the halfway point and we obtained free passes to see any other movie in lieu of a refund.

During our screening of "The Producers" we noticed a certain segment of the audience was howling with laughter at even the lamest jokes. It turned out there was a very high percentage of older women in the audience. Some even looked like they could've been cast members from the painfully unfunny musical sequence where a couple dozen identically dressed blue-hairs with walkers do a song & dance. Looks like we've come full circle.

It has been learned that Brooks is working on a film version of "Get Smart" and a sequel to "Spaceballs", one of the films of the "hit" period that "missed" just about as often as it "hit". One can only wish that inspiration again finds a home in Mel Brook's creative synapses before those two come to pass. After seeing "The Producers", it would be fair to ask of the hit Broadway production: "What was all the fuss about?"

To get to the nub of the matter, almost all the jokes in "The Producers" seem stale and fall flat. The usually reliable, if annoying, Will Ferrell presents a mere crumb of the inspired performance of Kenneth Mars as playwright "Franz Liebkind". Matthew Broderick unfortunately can't "do" Gene Wilder as "Leo Bloom", and it is a shame he was asked to, because he can be very funny. The luscious Uma Thurman is absolutely wasted as "Ulla" the sexy Swedish secretary who can't speak English. I say, CAN'T SPEAK ENGLISH! Whatever induced Brooks to have her speak so many lines in a patently fake accent? (Ferrell's was equally bad.) And her part was way over-written. The original "Ulla" (Lee Meredith) was on screen for mere moments but evokes a strong memory of giggly hotness.

Nathan Lane simply tries too hard as Max Bialystock, though he is a trouper and gives it his all. Come to think of it, almost everything about this movie tries too hard. Perhaps the musical numbers worked on the stage, but they seem rather pointless in the movie. They also make it far too long at two and a quarter hours. They are an exercise in self-indulgence.

In the past, one of Mel Brooks' favorite comic devices has been to have a character say one of his/her lines twice, as in the sequences in "High Anxiety" where Brophy (Ron Carey) keeps trying to pick up a heavy object, exclaiming, "I GOT IT! I GOT IT! .... I ain’t got it!" If you've seen enough of his films you'll notice it. Sometimes it works, at others it doesn't. It probably stems from the old Vaudeville theory of "hit them over the head enough times and they'll eventually get the joke." In "The Producers", Brooks seems to have made a film that is one gigantic repeat of itself.

This was brought home to me recently when listening to an interview where Brooks talked about the film. For what seemed like the one-hundredth time in my life, he brought up the subject of "a little old Jew trying to sing 'Dancing in the Dark' in the wrong key" at which point he demonstrates in a squeaky high old voice and you're supposed to laugh. There was a time (perhaps even after hearing it twenty times) when it was still funny.

Mel, I'm sorry. It just isn't funny any more. Enough already!

And thanks to all who voted for me in the Hugh Hewitt blog of the week/win a Crosley radio contest. Out of forty-odd entries I finished fifth, which I accept with humble gratefulness.

In any event, my wonderful wife bought it for me as a Christmas present.

Happy Holidays to all!

Last weekend I suffered chest pains and wound up having my second angiogram, a process where a surgeon inserts a catheter into an artery in the groin and uses it to explore the heart with contrast dye and X-ray video. My first such procedure was five years ago. The surgeon then performed a balloon angioplasty to open up some blockages and implanted three devices called stents to hold those areas open in one of the arteries supplying blood to my heart muscle.

I now have eight stents, which might sound bad until you learn more about the advances being made almost daily in the field of coronary intervention; this certainly beats open-heart bypass surgery. I walked out of the hospital the next day and went to lunch with my wife. I have had few if any side-effects, other than some anxiety and fatigue plus 2-3 days of low grade fever which is now gone. Even the incision site is pain free, a vast improvement over last time.

The stents are coated with a drug which improves the chances of a successful outcome, an innovation which was still experimental when I had my first angioplasty. I am lucky to live in San Diego, where the Scripps Hospital Cardiac Catheterization Lab is one of the busiest in southern California. I'm doubly lucky that my insurer, Kaiser-Permanente has a relationship with Scripps that results in their policyholders getting some of the finest heart care available anywhere.

The same doctor who did my first procedure performed this one. He was visibly elated to report to me that his earlier work had weathered the five years with no problems and that there were no further issues to be addressed. This was by no means a certain outcome with the non drug coated stents he used last time.

I still have not had an in-depth interview to discuss the finer details with my health care providers, but will be doing so in the coming days and weeks.

Over the next week or two I'll be adding to the story and updating the knowledge base. Suffice to say that I'm feeling much better and look forward to posting more about this almost miraculous process, which approaches Star Trek medicine.

If you can get past the thought of a talking beaver in an armour breastplate, you will probably enjoy the "Chronicles of Narnia". Trust me, the beaver’s actually pretty cool. Best of all is the magnificent Aslan the lion (voiced by Liam Neeson). While the filmmakers actually used a live lion, its face was computer animated to stunning effect. For the first time in a film the talking animals aren't phony. Cheers to the folks who brought it off. The first time you see and hear the malevolent wolves they might induce a shiver.

The story begins with four children being sent to a country estate in WWII England to escape the London bombings. Little Georgie Henley (as Lucy) is one of the most engaging child actors I have ever seen. She lights up the screen when she smiles and for a moment the world seems to have no troubles. She is without guile or put-on. The other child actors are also superb, but she can't help upstaging them.

One day while playing in the mansion Lucy steps into a wardrobe. Suddenly she finds herself in a snowy land of impossible beauty. There she meets Tumnus, a faun, who is almost as trustworthy as Lucy is trusting. Almost.

Brother Edmund also enters Narnia and is met by the “Queen”, who is actually the evil witch Jadis, who has condemned Narnia to a perpetual winter. Edmund is captured by the witch and held as bait for the other children. A prophesy has predicted that the four children will liberate Narnia from its eternal winter and that they will rule as sovereigns. This of course doesn't sit well with the witch-queen, so she plots to kill them.

Reams have been written about Christian themes in C.S. Lewis' works, but he doesn't hit you over the head. Aslan is obviously a Christ figure, and the fact that he sacrifices himself for the redemption of the Narnians is an obvious allusion to the crucifixion of Jesus. But there is no preaching; rather, there is a quiet undertone of "doing the right thing" throughout the story, and it is why it’s so powerful.

Lewis' own stepson, co-producer Douglas Gresham says: "C.S. Lewis' main idea about writing for children, included the theory that if a book is worth reading when you're five, it is still worth reading when you're 50." Gresham contends that he has yearned for decades to put his stepfather's works on the screen, and with this film he declares his satisfaction.

There is some realistic looking violence in the film but there is also little blood. The "hack & slay" combat looks as flesh-rending as anything in Gladiator. You just don't see any heads rolling. Because of the strong violence smaller children should stay home.

Coming up against Peter Jackson's “King Kong”, "Wardrobe" will have its work cut out to "bring home the bacon" for Disney. I don't think it will have much trouble.

Saw the new production of this Jane Austen classic tonight. Slow starter but grows on you very much within the first half-hour. Beautifully filmed.

Rating: well worth your time.

Fuller review when I settle some computer bugs.