Friday, December 30, 2005
"The Producers" - what happened?
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!
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!
