 The Producers 1968   N/R, 88 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn, Lee Meredith, Christopher Hewett, Estelle Winwood, Renee Taylor, Frank Campanella, Andreas Voutsinas, David Patch, William Hickey, Barney Martin, Shimen Ruskin, Josip Elic
Mel Brooks won the Oscar for Best Screenplay in this film about two characters, Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), who con people into investing in a non-existent Broadway show: "Springtime for Hitler." Wilder received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. 2 User Reviews
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| | Parts of this are the funniest movie ever made | 1fatts 03/27/2007 | Mel Brooks is a cannon on the loose. It is his strength and his weakness. The 2000-year-old man sketches with Carl Reiner are classic for Brooks' unpredictable leaps from political humor to burlesque inuendo to bizarre non-sequitur. At his best, he can take your breath away. At his worst, he is a runaway train.
Stand-up comedy benefits most from this kind of wildness; movies suffer most. Movies need plot and structure and discipline.
Brooks' best film, as a work of cinema, is probably Young Frankenstein because Gene Wilder shared writing credit and imposed some order which Mel Brooks simply cannot supply -- see all the shotgun "sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't" humor of "Robin Hood - Men in Tights", "Spaceballs", et al.
But even in a movie that is all over the map (they pretty much run out of central joke and plot in The Producers after the play is a hit), there are a half a dozen scenes that are perhaps the funniest stuff every put on film. Brooks' writing is certainly a major factor, and the other is the casting. Only Zero Mostel was Zero Mostel. He was a life force, a stampede, a landslide. He defined this role . . . and Tevye in Fiddler . . . and Pseudolus in "Funny Thing Happened. . . " Other people may have played his roles, but they were never near the standared. His Max Biolystock is incomparable. His teaming with the young, intensely neurotic Leo Bloom (Wilder), the outrageous Hold Me Touch Me (Estelle Winwood), Kenneth Mars' Nazi, Christopher Hewitt's gay director ("Max, he's wearing a dress."), etc. are the best scenes Brooks has every directed, the funniest filmwork he has ever done.
The first twenty minutes of the film are incomparable. I forgive Brooks all the dead ends and ramblings that may go on elsewhere. I take it as the price we have to pay to be allowed into the near-perfection of the scenes that work.
You can't call youself knowledgeable in comic film if you haven't studied The Producers. |
| | Outstanding | Googleeyes 03/01/2007 | | One of Mel Brooks finest achievements, maybe the best of his achievements. |
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Rum Runners 1971  N/R, 135 min.
Genre: Foreign / Adventure / Comedy
aka: Rum Boulevard
Boulevard du Rhum
Director: Robert Enrico
Cast: Lino Ventura, Brigitte Bardot, Bill Travers, Clive Revill, Jess Hahn, Antonio Casas, Andreas Voutsinas, Guy Marchand, Jack Betts, Roger Jacquet, Marc Eyraud
During the United States' prohibition era, rum-runner Captain Cornelius von Zeelinga (Lino Ventura) sails the Caribbean Sea with his smuggled rum. While on one of his runs, he meets and falls in love with his favorite actress Linda Larue (Brigitte Bardot), and a doomed romance ensues.
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The Twelve Chairs 1970  G, 94 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Ron Moody, Frank Langella, Dom DeLuise, Mel Brooks, Bridget Brice, Robert Bernal, Diana Coupland, Andreas Voutsinas, Vlada Petric, David Lander
A Russian nobleman (Ron Moody) gets help from a thief (Frank Langella) in retrieving 12 chairs of a dining-room set. One of the chairs has a fortune in jewels hidden in the seat.
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| 1. The Producers (1968)
2. Rum Runners (1971)
aka: Rum Boulevard
aka: Boulevard du Rhum
3. The Twelve Chairs (1970)
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