Hello Down There 1969  G, 99 min.
Genre: Comedy / Sci-Fi
aka: Sub-A-Dub-Dub
Director: Jack Arnold, Ricou Browning
Cast: Tony Randall, Janet Leigh, Roddy McDowall, Jim Backus, Ken Berry, Charlotte Rae, Richard Dreyfuss, Arnold Stang, Merv Griffin, Lee Meredith, Kay Cole, Gary Tigerman, Lou Wagner, Bruce Gordon, Harvey Lembeck
This story is about Fred and Vivian Miller (Tony Randall and Janet Leigh) and their family moving into an underwater home where they plan to live for 30 days. TV host Merv Griffin (playing himself) arranges an underwater interview. Meanwhile, two of the Miller kids–Lorrie (Kay Cole) and Tommy (Gary Tigerman)–are members of a rock band that includes Harold, Nate, and Marvin (Richard Dreyfuss, Roddy McDowall, and Lou Wagner), and they are trying to cut a record. The film is silly, but it is fun to watch.
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 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
| User Reviews |
| | 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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The Sunshine Boys 1975 PG, 111 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Herbert Ross
Cast: Walter Matthau, George Burns, Richard Benjamin, Lee Meredith, Howard Hesseman, F. Murray Abraham, James Cranna, Ron Rifkin, Jennifer Lee, Fritz Feld
In this is a fine film adaptation of the Neil Simon Broadway hit, the story revolves around two feuding ex-vaudeville stars who try for a comeback through a television special. George Burns was awarded an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and Walter Matthau was nominated for Best Actor.
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| 1. Hello Down There (1969)
aka: Sub-A-Dub-Dub
2. The Producers (1968)
3. The Sunshine Boys (1975)
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