The Director's Oeuvre: Mel Brooks - Silent Movie

With 'The Producers', 'Young Frankenstein', and 'Blazing Saddles', Mel Brooks had proven that he could handle himself with ambitious, gutsy comedies.  But in 1976, he attempted something truly daring, Three Stooges sans the comedy.

Silent Movie is about a once-great filmmaker named Mel Funn (ugh) who attempts a comeback by presenting a major Hollywood studio with a screenplay for a silent film.  The studio, in danger of being bought out by the evil corporation Engulf and Devour, wants nothing to do with the outdated concept.  Mel convinces the Chief that this picture could save the studio if he gets the biggest celebrities in the world to star in it.  The Studio Head agrees and we're off.

I honestly can't put into words how much I don't like most of this movie.  I spoke to my friends about it and I liked it the most out of the three of us, yet the more I think about it the less I find anything redeeming.

Mel Brooks plays Mel Funn (UGH).  This is the first film of his in which he truly stars, and it marks the beginning of a downward spiral for Mel's career, in which he becomes more interested in promotion of the Mel Brooks brand than he is in making a good product.  I really can't stand Brooks in this movie.  He goes through the whole 87 minute runtime with a look of nauseating self-satisfaction on his smug face.

Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise play Funn's associates, Bug-Eyed and Fat Ass respectively.  The former has bug eyes and a brain disorder, and the latter is fat.

This movie has nothing interesting to offer about anything.  Occasionally there will be a decent scene of slapstick humor, like when the Big Bad Executive and his Associate can't put on a coat.  Its a lame joke but they honestly do come up an admirable number of ways to not put on a coat.  The problem is, and its a problem that lingers over the entire picture, that Mel Brooks just hired his buddies to be in the movie.  Even at its limited peaks, it suffers because it stars actors who don't know how to do physical comedy.  There is no scene in this movie that Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin couldn't do a million times better.  "Don't you know slapstick is dead?!" exclaims a studio head, before slipping on his chair and proving his own point.

Lets be clear, Mel Brooks is not interested in telling stories.  He's interested in yuck yucks.  Characters don't need to have character.  Narrative arcs?  Who needs em?  Who needs character development when I have a scene about seeing-eye dogs?  There's a scene that deals with Mel Brooks', sorry Mel Funn's alcoholism but its only there to give you the illusion of character development and apart from the sight gag of a giant bottle of hootch, the scene is a dud.  "All hail the king of the winos!" cry the bums.  Somebody give me a drink.

The plot claims to be a movie about making a movie.  Its not.  We never see a camera, never see film roll once.  There are a dozen ways Brooks could have presented the film-within-a-film angle in a compelling and intelligent fashion.  He rejects all of those in exchange for the crassest and most commercial of choices.  Silent Movie is a movie about cameos.  Good God, the cameos.  Paul Newman, James Caan, Anne Bancroft (I wonder how they got her?) and [in your best Archer impression] OH MY GOD!  BURT REYNOLDS! All waste their time and contribute nothing.

There is a scene where they try to court Liza Minelli on a studio lot but they have to go in disguised as knights in shining armor, but get this, THEY CAN'T SIT DOWN!  And every time they try to, you won't believe this, they keep knocking stuff over and breaking things!  This goes on for four and a half side-splitting, gut-busting, never-ending minutes!  At the end, Liza inexplicably realizes that this buffoon is Mel Funn and even more inexplicably, wants to be in his movie.  Why?  Because comedy, of course!  Fuck you, Mel.

Of all the cameos, and indeed the entire film, only the legendary mime, Marcel Marceau comes out with his dignity intact.  He appears for less than a minute to show these amateurs how its done.

This movie leaves none alive.  Literally every major actor in this movie have faced the Reaper, save Mel Brooks, who made a deal with the devil for this 87 minute wank fest to be commercially successful, and Bernadette Peters and thats only because she's a ginger-haired vampire.

Unlike the vastly superior but intensely overrated 'The Artist,' this movie is completely devoid of meaning.  What does this movie have to say about silent films?  Nothing.  What does this movie have to say about fighting your way out of obscurity?  Nothing.  What does this movie have to say about Hollywood?  Nothing.  Famous people are famous.  That's about it.  This whole thing is one bad joke.  Brooks watched the slapstick comedy of Chaplin, Keaton, and the Three Stooges and said "I can do it better!" and then he saw the work Woody Allen was doing and said, "And I can act better than him too!"  Poor Mel.  He didn't have anyone around to tell him this sucks.

This movie's legacy is a lot like a good silent film.  The less said, the better.