I saw the original with Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel years ago, and I'm also familiar with the Broadway cast album.
But seeing the new version is something else. As I stated in another thread, I once heard a reviewer praise a comedy by calling it the work of "lunatics with cameras". That pretty much sums up "The Producers".
I'm still chuckling over certain bits. There is a lot of gay humor, of the extremely limp-wristed type. (Roger Bart probably utters the longest single-syllable word in the history of motion pictures.) There's a crazy Nazi, there's horny little old ladies...in short, something to offend everyone. (What else would you expect from Mel Brooks?)
I have to say this: some reviewers thought the acting was way overdone. Lane and Broderick, in particular, shout their lines as though they're still playing to the back row of the balcony. And the reviewers also mentioned that the whole look is "stagey"; i.e., they didn't really "open up" the story much for the movies.
All true enough. But I'll allow that the director, Susan Stroman, was trying for that look, that is, that overblown 1940s musical look. When viewed that way, those "deficiencies" don't look nearly as bad.
Overall, this is a film I'd recommend without hesitation to anybody (except, perhaps, the kind of audience that gets offended by stuff like The Book of Daniel). The craziness in it is inspired in a way which I think compares favorably to "Airplane!" and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". It's that kind of lunacy. It is without a doubt the funniest thing I've seen in at least a dozen years.
I'll let it go at that for now. I've gotta go find the producer of this thing and invest in 100% of the sequel. Carry on.
Thomas Elizabeth Veil
But seeing the new version is something else. As I stated in another thread, I once heard a reviewer praise a comedy by calling it the work of "lunatics with cameras". That pretty much sums up "The Producers".
I'm still chuckling over certain bits. There is a lot of gay humor, of the extremely limp-wristed type. (Roger Bart probably utters the longest single-syllable word in the history of motion pictures.) There's a crazy Nazi, there's horny little old ladies...in short, something to offend everyone. (What else would you expect from Mel Brooks?)
I have to say this: some reviewers thought the acting was way overdone. Lane and Broderick, in particular, shout their lines as though they're still playing to the back row of the balcony. And the reviewers also mentioned that the whole look is "stagey"; i.e., they didn't really "open up" the story much for the movies.
All true enough. But I'll allow that the director, Susan Stroman, was trying for that look, that is, that overblown 1940s musical look. When viewed that way, those "deficiencies" don't look nearly as bad.
Overall, this is a film I'd recommend without hesitation to anybody (except, perhaps, the kind of audience that gets offended by stuff like The Book of Daniel). The craziness in it is inspired in a way which I think compares favorably to "Airplane!" and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". It's that kind of lunacy. It is without a doubt the funniest thing I've seen in at least a dozen years.
I'll let it go at that for now. I've gotta go find the producer of this thing and invest in 100% of the sequel. Carry on.
Thomas Elizabeth Veil
