The Director's Oeuvre: Mel Brooks - High Anxiety

1977 was a watershed year for filmmaking.  George Lucas was reshaping the way we viewed popcorn entertainment with Star Wars and Woody Allen was elevating comedy with a newfound maturity with Annie Hall.  The same year, Mel Brooks dug his heels in deep and declared himself for what he has always been, a parodist.  And with that, we have 'High Anxiety.'

Dr. Richard Thorndyke is a psychoanalyst who suffers from a severe case of acrophobia, a fear of heights.  He arrives at the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous (great name) where he is to serve as the new administrator.  Slowly, Thorndyke begins to suspect that things are not as they seem.  People are framed for murder, the lunatics have taken over the asylum, excreting pigeons occupy jungle gyms, bellboys accost hotel patrons, and normal people act like cocker spaniels.  In other words, a normal day in LA.

If it feels like something you've seen before, that's because it is.  High Anxiety is a take down of suspense thrillers, namely the oeuvre of the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.  The script reads like someone dropped all of Alfred Hitchcock's screenplays and hastily reassembled them, and from a stylistic standpoint, it totally works.

Mel Brooks stars once again as Dr. Thorndyke and while his introduction begins with a subtly amusing gag, I can never shake the feeling that his movies would be better with a different actor.  Apparently, this role was originally offered to Gene Wilder but scheduling conflicts forced him to step away.  What a shame.

But never fear! Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachmen return as Dr. Charles Montague and Nurse Diesel.  Leachman plays "Stern German Mistress" like nobody's business and Korman thrives at playing frustrated villains who aren't nearly as dangerous as they think they are.  The two get to work together here and their perverse, sadomasochistic love affair is a thing to behold.  All their work with Mel Brooks has led to this moment, as though Young Frankenstein's Frau Blücher and Blazing Saddles' Hedley Lamarr and his Froggy were destined to be together.  Its beautiful.

Madeline Kahn continues her Brooks alum winning streak as Victoria Brisbane, a breathy, busty blonde a la Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak.  I'm frequently impressed with how gracefully she slides into these movies and, just like most of her appearances so far, she is underused but memorable.

The big achievement in this movie is the way Brooks pokes fun at the Hitchcock style.  At times, the stylistic replication of Universal Horror films in 'Young Frankenstein' was a detriment to the films overall pacing but here it works undeniably to the film's advantage, with insert shots, transitional shots, and extreme close-ups skewed just enough to make it recognizable and comical.  Its not haha funny, just clever.

The film is, after all, a satire.  Half the jokes are straight up gags and the other half are exaggerating Hitchcock's most distinctive elements.  Where the film truly excels is when the two meet, like when Brooks hears that the person he is replacing was... MURDERED.  Familiar Bernard Herman strings take over.  Dramatic dutch angles of our horrified hero, looking every which way.  Then we reveal a symphony practicing in the tour bus driving next to them.  Its ludicrous, but it works.

The score, by Brooks' frequent collaborator, John Morris mimics Bernard Herman's compositions so well its almost creepy.  Morris also wrote the music for another comedy whodunit, CLUE.  He's a musical chameleon, a Michael Giacchino before Michael Giacchino.

When the film is at its weakest, it tries to make jokes that have nothing to do with the subject its spoofing.  At one point the movie comes to a screeching halt for a musical number.  The song in question, "High Anxiety" is written, composed, and performed by Brooks as well.  One can only assume that he was paid less than scale and could only make a living by wearing as many hats as humanly possible.  The scene simply doesn't work.  Is it a parody of a Hitchcock film?  I don't think so.  Its a weak five minutes that would have been on the Cutting Room floor if not for Brooks' vanity.  I'm pretty sure its just Mel playing Sinatra for five minutes.  Mel Brooks does in the real world what most of us only do in the shower.  And he's getting paid for it!

The single greatest moment in the entire film is the payoff to a drawn out joke involving Dr. Thorndyke pestering a lobby boy for a newspaper.  "I'll get it!" he shrieks.  The joke falls completely flat.  Surely the actor just overplayed it for a lame joke.  Then it keeps going.  Still overacting.  Still lame.  A few minutes later, Thorndyke is in the shower.  A familiar shadow looms beyond the curtain before they are yanked aside to reveal the bellboy with curled newspaper in hand.  "HERE! HERE! HERE!" he shouts, his high pitched screeches replacing the iconic score.  Brooks falls to the ground, bringing the curtain down with him.  The Bellhop exits.  The newspaper ink bleeds into the drain.  Genius.

The references are all clear as day, THE BIRDS, PSYCHO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, REAR WINDOW, and VERTIGO, only here they call it "high anxiety."  As Groundskeeper Willie once asked, "you want to get sued?"

While Silent Movie felt masturbatory, self-congratulatory, and smug, High Anxiety shows an evolution to Brooks.  The film is a devotion to craft and it shows that the filmmaker is more than just a joke teller.  He loves the films he's lambasting and what's more, he understands why they work and how to make it work for him.  This film may not be the game changer that Annie Hall was but shows effort and originality and that's good enough for me.

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.

The Director's Oeuvre: Mel Brooks - Young Frankenstein

1974 was a good year for Mel Brooks.  By this point, he was essentially a household name and a staple in American comedy.  In February, he released his western classic 'Blazing Saddles' and a mere 10 months later, he was back in theaters with what many would deem another classic, 'Young Frankenstein.'

This macabre tale is that of Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced Fronkenshteen), a physician, lecturer, and direct descendent of the legendary Dr. Henry Frankenstein.  He has made a reputable career for himself in the scientific community but is unable to escape the shadow of his infamous ancestry for which he has nothing but contempt.  His life is turned upside down when he inherits his family's estate in Transylvania.  With the help of a loyal assistant, Igor and a busty handmaiden named Inga, Dr. Frankenstein confronts the mysteries of his past and attempts to finish his grandfather's work.

Gene Wilder throws himself into the role of Dr. Frankenstein in a way we haven't seen before.  His manner is that of someone truly mad, struggling to keep himself in check.  His fear that he is just as mad as his grandfather is always present in his performance though never expressly stated.  His raw frustration and fury bubbles under the surface, eating away at him.  What we get is an explosive, bipolar performance.  But is that necessarily a good thing?  While this ferocity may work for a horror film or drama, comedy demands a straight man, someone to take the brunt of the craziness around him.  Wilder is conflictive with his own creation.  He wants to act as both the exasperated straight man AND the bombastic mad genius and its hard to latch onto both.

Marty Feldman and his iconic eyes plays the hunchbacked Igor (pronounced Eye-gor).  Like Frederick, he too is a descendant of the character we all know.  Bug-eyed expression and warm dimwittedness carries him a long way.  He succeeds in the role despite the jokes he's forced to deliver.  More on that later.  Teri Garr plays Inga, a well-endowed personal assistant concerned for the good Doctor but equally curious and loyal to a fault.  The three of them work together as a team infinitely better than Bender and Vorobyaninov ever did 'The Twelve Chairs.' All three of them share great chemistry.

The late Peter Boyle plays The Monster (that's right, not Frankenstein, the Monster) and he is fantastic.  He plays the part, as all great Frankenstein's Monsters do, with a childlike understanding of a cruel and unforgiving world.  Despite being buried in prosthetics, Boyle has a remarkably expressive face that endears us to him.

Chloris Leachman has a small part as Frau Blücher, a housekeeper so horrifying that the very mention of her name is enough to frighten the horses.  Kenneth Mars plays Inspector Kemp, a one-armed policeman torn between wanting to maintain law and order in his community and wanting to get a good ol' fashioned riot going.  Madeline Kahn also appears briefly as a vain socialite who just won't put out.  She's barely in the movie but she makes the most out of every minute.

Young Frankenstein is Mel Brooks' most technically accomplished film to date.  While The Producers just told a comedic story and Blazing Saddles skewered westerns, Young Frankenstein has a far more specific target in its crosshairs, namely the Universal Horror Films, 'Frankenstein' and to a lesser extent, 'The Bride of Frankenstein.'  The cinematography by Gerald Hischfeld, production design by Dale Hennesy, and score by John Morris are all impressive the same way Tim Burton's 'Ed Wood' was.  However, I would hesitate to call it a classic, or even a wholly successful work.

Pacing wise, this movie is abysmal.  I was watching this film with a friend and we hadn't even gotten past the title sequence before my friend muttered, "these are going on forever."  She wasn't wrong.  The opening credits are simply names and crew positions superimposed over a shot of a looming castle while slow violin music plays.  The whole experience is reminiscent of 'Frankenstein' and films of that ilk but one thing those movies were not is funny.  In general, that is Young Frankenstein's greatest problem.  It mirrors the style of the horror film without countering with the timing of a comedy.  Not every joke in Blazing Saddles lands, but it is throwing a joke at you every 10 seconds.  The jokes in Young Frankenstein are far too infrequent and when they do appear they are hit and miss.

Wilder wrote the screenplay with Mel Brooks adding support and its painfully apparent.  That's not to say that there aren't good jokes, there are, but there are just as many clunkers that have no business being in this film.  At one point Gene Wilder arrives at a train station in Transylvania.  Despite the fact that the conductor has just told us that we have arrived in Transylvania, Wilder leans out the window to a passing Shoeshine boy and asks, "Pardon me, boy.  Is this the Transylvania station?"  The boy responds "Ja, ja.  Track 29."  He turns away before asking, "Hey, can I give you a shine?"  "No thank you" says Wilder.  Hilarious.  For those of you who are totally lost, "Track 29. Can I give you a shine?"  are lyrics from the 1941 song "Chattanooga Choo Choo."  First off, this is a stupid joke.  Second, it doesn't make any sense other than making the audience say "we know those lyrics."  And third, it steps over the REAL joke which is that Wilder was able to get to Transylvania by train.

Brooks is also far too fond of 'looking at the camera' humor.  9 times out of 10, its just Brooks explaining jokes to the audience.  "We must accept our failures with quiet dignity and grace" sighs Frankenstein before he throws a tantrum and cries.  Igor looks at the audience.  "Quiet dignity and grace."  He rolls his eyes.  "GET IT?!" shouts Brooks off camera.  "He didn't accept the situation with dignity and grace!"  Yes Mel.  We get it.

Once the Monster rises from his metal slab, the script picks up with its jokes.  It suddenly has purpose and direction.  One slapstick scene with the Monster and a generous Blind Hermit is particularly effective.  But at the same time, some elements of the story, like The Monster meeting a little girl by a well, are riffing on the 1931 film so specifically that I can't imagine they'd be anything other than chuckleworthy for an unfamiliar audience.  The scene serves no other purpose but to make fun of its predecessor scene by scene and in doing so, fails to work as its own narrative.  I'm not sure why this is viewed as a classic.  It's nowhere near as funny as The Producers or Blazing Saddles.  It is a well made visually but I've never known the average moviegoer to say "you should see this movie Young Frankenstein, the cinematography is Uh-May-Zing!"  That being said, there is more than enough in this movie to recommend.

Following the success of The Producers: the Musical, Brooks and company tried to milk that prized heifer again and turned Young Frankenstein into a Broadway Musical.  The show received mixed reviews and faded from the public consciousness.  Don't worry guys, we'll always have Transylvania.

Gene Wilder has gone on record saying that this is his favorite film he's ever been involved with.  I feel bad for the poor man.  He doesn't know how good 'Will Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' is.

The Director's Oeuvre: Mel Brooks - Blazing Saddles

In every sense, 'Blazing Saddles' feels like the movie Mel Brooks should have made after 'The Producers.'  With newfound confidence in his script, a strong cast, and a bigger budget, Brooks swings for the fences with this satirical western that shocks as often as it enthralls.

The story is about Bart, a black railroad worker who is appointed Sheriff of the small hick town of Rock Ridge by a conniving State Attorney General with hopes that he will insight unrest and run out the townspeople so he can buy the land cheap and build a railroad.  Its honestly not as complicated as it reads.

Cleavon Little plays Bart and he is as charming, charismatic, and likable as can be.  He takes the town's racism with good cheer and a smile that says "I get it. You're all bigots. And that's just the way things are."  The role requires someone eternally hopeful in a hopeless situation and Little absolutely nails it.

While the movie starts off a little rocky, one-note, and goofy for goofy's sake, the story picks up quite a bit when Gene Wilder appears as Jim, the fastest, drunkest hands in the West.  Wilder is effortlessly funny and his unassuming mug makes his speed all the more surprising.  The camaraderie between Jim and Bart is one of the highlights of the movie.

Madeline Kahn is decent as Lili Von Shtupp.  I honestly can't tell if she's trying or not.  She does get some classic one-liners in though.  "They're always coming and going and going and coming and always too soon."  I must confess that my disappointment in her role is entirely on me.  Lili is constantly referred to as one of the great comedy characters and I'm not sure why.  She's not as big a part as history would like to remember.  She's just another adversary for Bart to convert, nothing special.  I just hope you think that lisp humor is hiwawious.

But the real star of the movie is Harvey Korman as Hedey, sorry, Hedley Lamarr.  He plays the conniving State Attorney General who is continually frustrated by Bart's success in Rock Ridge.  His seething anger and dastardly villainy is a thing of wonder.

Mel Brooks is the weakest part of the movie as a cross-eyed moron, Governor William J Lepetomane, a role that exists solely so Brooks can have a part in his own movie.  I wonder if his check from the paddleball people cleared.

I can't stress how shocking this movie is.  The original title of the film was 'TEX X', "dock that chink a day's pay for nappin' on the job!" is one of the opening lines of the film, and the use of the N-word alone would make Quentin Tarantino blush.  There is a boldness present we haven't seen from Brooks before.  And yet, the film is more than just a shock fest/satire of Western tropes.  Its also a pointed criticism about the way minorities of all sorts were exploited, including African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and large-breasted secretaries.

The Looney Tunes humor feels a little tacked on, as though they didn't know what joke to put there but they knew they had to have one.  But this movie is shooting from the hip with a new joke or gag every 10 seconds.  If one of them doesn't work, and many of them don't, there will be a new one shortly.

The last act of the movie pushes meta humor, an element that will define Mel Brooks' career, to its limits with a twist so extreme even M Night Shyamalan wouldn't dare try it.  I won't spoil it here.  I'm sure at the time this was an unparalleled example of self-referential comedy but it goes on far too long as though Brooks made a list of every gag he could think of and then filmed them regardless of how long funny it was.

A recurring element in Mel Brooks' filmography is that even if you haven't seen his stuff, you've seen it referenced.  This holds true for Blazing Saddles more than any other film in his career thus far, and for good reason.  It's just that funny.

The Director's Oeuvre: Mel Brooks - The Twelve Chairs

While everybody emphasizes the importance of a director's first film, I believe that the second film is more important.  With your first film, you cut your teeth.  With your second film, and a larger budget, you prove your worth.  Quentin Tarantino followed 'Reservoir Dogs' with Pulp Fiction' and Steven Spielberg followed 'The Sugarland Express' with 'Jaws' while Marc Webb followed '(500) Days of Summer' with 'The Amazing Spider-man' (sigh).

This brings us to 'The Twelve Chairs', Mel Brooks' sophomore effort, in which he trades strong characters and clever dialogue for scale, and loses at every turn.

Based on a famous Russian novel of the same name, the movie follows three greedy men as they search high and low, racing back and forth across Russia to get their hands on twelve gold-encrusted chairs, one of which contains a fortune of jewels.

Ron Moody plays Vorobyaninov, an aristocrat wiped out by the communist revolution.  When the movie begins, his dying mother-in-law tells him that she has hidden her valuables from the Bolsheviks by sewing them inside one of her ornate chairs.  Desperate to return to his old way of life, Vorobyaninov sets out to retrieve the chair.

A clever, handsome, and homeless conman named Ostap Bender, played by a young Frank Langella deduces Vorobyaninov's true intentions and the pair are off to find the treasure.  Dom DeLuise plays a local priest who abandons his post to join the hunt but he's mostly there to pad out the runtime.

Mel Brooks is featured front and center in the poster and yet he is barely in the film.  Ironically, though I've never been a great fan of Brooks as an actor, he's the best part of this movie by far.  It's a shame that he couldn't be the main character, or even a bumbling sidekick for more than five minutes.

The Twelve Chairs is an uneasy film.  It's not what you would call messy, just uninspired and unmotivated.  It is based on an old Russian novel of the same name.  Apparently this is one of 18 different adaptations.  I can only assume that Brooks decided to do the comedic version of the story but he only half commits.  Often the style feels amateur and unsure.  Not since Benny Hill have I seen so much sped up footage in one comedy.  I can only assume its because the footage was too slow, so they ratched up the tempo and added a lot of "whoop whoop" noises to make it funny.  The cinematography is decent and the locations are certainly beautiful but Brooks never gives us a moment to appreciate it.  He's in such a hurry to make this feel like some sort of 'Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' type caper that he fails to involve us in the characters, the mystery, or the world around them.

I can't say I ever felt anything for the characters.  I never wanted them to succeed, I just hoped that maybe this chair would be the fabled chair and the story would be over with.  Eventually, I grew frustrated with Vorobyaninov and Ostap as human beings and with Mel Brooks as a storyteller.  At no point do Moody and Langella ever compliment one another as a team.  Bender has a plan.  Vorobyaninov can't contain himself and does something stupid.  Bender restrains him or saves him and thinks of a new plan.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Without strong characters or compelling relationships, comedies rely on exceptional set pieces.  The Twelve Chairs certainly has set pieces, it rushes from one scenario to the next, but every single scene is unfulfilled and they all feel abandoned, as though Brooks lost confidence half way through and jumped ship.  There is a fun scene at a circus involving a high wire act but like every other scene, it lacks the proper build up and pay off.  Everything about this movie is a creative anomaly and the word "funny" is merely conceptual.  Mel Brooks was a comedian and a drummer before he was a filmmaker.  He knows the importance of rhythm.  And yet this movie exists in a race to finish itself.  It's in a hurry to cease being.

The Director's Oeuvre: Mel Brooks - The Producers (1967)

A few friends and I started a club as a means of keeping in touch. One of us will choose a director and together we'll go through that director's films one at a time and talk about them. Currently, we're going through the career of comedy legend, Mel Brooks, and what better place to start than with his first film, 'The Producers.'

The Producers serves as Mel Brooks' debut and what a debut it is. While most people think of Brooks as a parodist, there was a period, however briefly when he made comedies that worked as their own movies.

The story is absolute genius. A once-great producer MAX BIALYSTOCK teams up with a nebbish accountant LEO BLOOM with a cockamamie scheme, namely that if they raise a ludicrous amount of money and they put on a guaranteed flop, they could abscond with the leftover money and retire as millionaires. From a comedic standpoint, this plot is filled to bursting with hilarious opportunities and for the most part, The Producers makes the most out of them.

Zero Mostel plays Max Bialystock and while many know him as Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, this was the role he was born to play. He's delightfully repugnant as one of the failed giants of his craft. How low does he go? The film begins with him selling his body to little, horny old ladies for "checkies," his sweaty combover barely keeping up with him as he runs from one geriatric tryst to the next.

Gene Wilder has his breakout performance as Leo Bloom, a spineless accountant with a propensity for panic attacks and a slavish devotion to his security blanket. Its his clever hypothetical accounting theory that lays out the plot but its Max Bialystock's desperation, at one point reaching his hands to the heavens and shouting "LORD, I WANT THAT MONEY!" that sets the story into motion. Wilder and Mostel make one hell of a team in this movie and their chemistry is off the charts.

The two set out to find the worst play ever written and they strike gold in "SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER", a concept so audacious, you already know about it by reputation. The author of this masterpiece is Franz Liebkind played by Kenneth Mars, as a Nazi and Hitler devotee who escaped the war and immigrated to the US of A. Play in hand, Bialystock and Bloom assemble the crew for their theatrical catastrophe, including a flamboyantly gay director, Joel Schumacher before Joel Schumacher, Roger De Bris. His utter creative bankruptcy is one of the consistent laughs throughout the film.

The only sour note is Dick Shawn as Lorenzo St. DuBois or LSD for short (get it?). He's a beatnik so terrible he just has to be right. However, he is representative of all the problems I have with the second act.

WARNING! HERE BE SPOILERS!

After LSD joins the cast, the pacing goes down the tubes, the slowest moment being LSD's musical number "Love Power" which is so boring and drawn out that it is completely absent from the Broadway Musical. Indeed, Lorenzo's character has been excised entirely.

The play opens to everyone's predictable outrage with Wilder and Mostel exiting before any of the angry patrons. They leave a hair too early though because as soon as LSD sets foot on stage, his hippy portrayal of the mustachioed dictator has the audience in (unbelievable) stitches. This is where I am going to disagree with people but I firmly believe that the scenes in the theater threaten to destroy the movie entirely. Why? Because the manner in which the play is presented makes no sense. "Oh shush, Lukas. It's a comedy." you say. But the core concept is flawed. Roger DeBris intends to make a sincere, dramatic work. His problem is that he's such a poor director that even when he intends to be serious, he falls back on his tired, old, and lets not be coy about it, gay clichés. But what I don't understand is how LSD made it all the way to opening night with that performance accepted by DeBris and with the Kraut being none-the-wiser. LSD is terrible, undoubtedly, but he's too terrible.

Some will say that I'm overanalyzing a simple joke, but allow me to point you to the remake, which is almost word for word the original film, but with musical numbers and a dramatically restructured second act. As mentioned before, in the musical there is no LSD. Leibkind is cast as his beloved Führer and intends to play the role with all the sincerity he can muster. However, on opening night, he breaks his leg and can't go on. He is replaced last minute... by Roger DeBris! This is an ingenious change. 'Springtime For Hitler' now takes on a different satirical edge. DeBris doesn't know he's awful. His homosexuality shines through. He is utterly incapable of playing the part straight.

The rest of the musical is very similar to the movie, except for a few character changes. Leo having a secret desire to be a Broadway Producer adds some complexity and depth to an otherwise shallow role but apart from that it's basically verbatim. And why should it change? The screenplay for Mel Brooks' comedy is downright untouchable. It has a reputation for being one of those great comedies and its entirely deserved. You've heard lines from this movie without even knowing it. "Actors aren't animals? Have you ever eaten with one?!"

It is clear that Mel Brooks poured his heart and soul into this project and it really is required viewing for anyone who says they like comedy. With movies like "Young Frankenstein" and "Robin Hood: Men in Tights", Mel Brooks will become one of Hollywood's premier satirists. Its clear, even from his first film, that he has a firm grasp on the concept.