|
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|||||
The Producers (1968) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) |
|
Is it possible that there is someone who doesn't know that this is the Mel Brooks show which single-handedly saved Broadway after 9/11? Perhaps you also know that it will soon be made into a movie with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. It was a movie once before, in 1968, starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder and Ken Mars. It hasn't held up as well as Brooks's Blazing Saddles, which can still keep young audiences in stitches constantly. The Producers contains a lot of dead spots and altogether too much of the 1960s brand of slapstick seen on F Troop and Gilligan's Island - broad, unsubtle, overacted, overmilked, bloated physical schtick, at which Zero Mostel was the master. But the best parts are still sheer genius. The film contains so many comic gems that I still laugh when I watch them performed, even though I have the dialogue memorized. For those three of you who have been living on a remote Pacific island, unaware that WW2 ended, The Producers is the story of a con man and an accountant who conceive of a brilliant get-rich-quick scheme. In theory, if a Broadway producer were to sell 10000% of a Broadway flop, nobody would care. Investors don't look to get money back from a play which closes the first night, and the IRS doesn't audit the books of obscure money losers. There's only one hitch. The play must fail. If you raise 100 times as much as you need, and the play succeeds, you have to pay back 100 times what you earn, and will soon be headed to the greybar hotel. The film thus centers around the search for and production of the worst play ever written, Springtime for Hitler, a love poem to the Fuhrer. The title song of the play-within-a-film sums up the spirit of the film better than I could:
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|||||
Return to the Movie House home page
