So I saw this movie with my family Monday morning, and it's freaking hilarious. It's a Mel Brooks movie, and it's got a bit of Hollywood and Broadway history to it. There was another movie by the same title, but it was made in 1968 and starred Gene Wilder and Zero Motel, with the 2005 version starring Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane in those roles. The 2005 version is itself based largely on the 2001 real Broadway production.
Nathan Lane is an excellent singer, I think, with a superhuman and hysterical control over his facial muscles. I'm talking like Tleixau levels here. Matthew Broderick is very good at acting neurotic and making it funny, and turns out to have a decent voice too, and be a good dancer. Uma Thurman is hilarious, and to my knowledge this is her first comedy role. Very different from seeing her go nuts with a giant ginsu knife.
There aren't really any Mel Brooks films or comedies that I haven't absolutely loved, and this is in true Mel Brooks style: zany, outrageous, over-the-top, and aware of being all three. Also in keeping with Mel Brooks style was his willingness-he revels in it, really-of making jokes about many offensive stereotypes, hamming them up in order to make them hilarious and ridiculous. Homosexuals, transvestites, Nazis, and bad-English speaking hot ladies all get painted with that brush, and it's sure to really offend some people, not just offend them for a moment before the laughter.
If you don't like jokes about things like Nazis (I should point out however that there is not even a hint or mention of the Holocaust, except for mentioning Nazis in general), homosexuals, cross-dressers, or accountants, I'd say steer clear. I'd also say "lighten up, man!" because I fail to see how anyone could regard the jokes as anything but. They make mock of people who truly are ridiculous, just like we all like to make fun of people on the extreme fringes of all groups. I'm not just talking homosexuals (to pick the set of jokes most likely to draw offense), I'm talking cross-dressing, prima-donna, bimbo-headed homosexuals. Anyone who exhibits the middle two traits is going to get made fun of.
If you can think of such jokes in that light, then I think you'll laugh your butts off. Or if you've seen other Mel Brooks films and liked them, that's a pretty good indicator. But if you've seen other Mel Brooks films and liked `em, and you don't mind a movie with singing and dancing in it, I think you should definitely see this flick. I'll be seeing it in theaters at least one more time.
General Plot Spoilers
The story revolves around Max Bialystock and Leopold Bloom, one a formerly successful Broadway producer who is way down on his luck and as well as willing to cut lots of corners. Leopold Bloom is a neurotic accountant working for a firm who does Max's books.
Max raises more money than he needs to produce his plays by wiling little old ladies with sex and romance and sexually romantic roleplaying to get checks from them for strange plays titled "to cash". Leo discovers this and remarks that an unscrupulous producer could make more money producing a flop than a success, by raising more money just like Max did, but raising LOTS more money-hundreds of thousands too much. If it flops, no one will expect Max to pay the backers.
From there the scheme is hatched, and the two search for the absolute worst play ever written, the worst director, the worst actors, everything. They end up going with Springtime for Hitler, a "gay romp with Eva and Adolf in Birchesgarden (sp?)". The author is a Nazi who is terrified of being discovered for a Nazi, quite nuts, and the rest of the crew the two assemble are equally bizarre and hilarious.
The story revolves around this idea and its execution. The 2005 version differs from the 1968 version in that it is modeled much more after the real Broadway production of The Producers (which I'm told won gobs and gobs of awards), including a lot of singing and dancing. There are also some changes to the way things happen, as well as making room for a role for Uma Thurman's character, who in the 1968 version has only a few seconds worth of screentime and speaking lines.
I didn't know it was out already. I've got the music from the 2001 production and absolutely love Springtime for Hitler. Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
The original is good too. I have it on DVD. I haven't seen the new one though. I need too.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Well as a matter of fact, I've seen the 1968 version. But I saw it about two days before the 2005 version.
I bought that DVD for my Mom (the 1968 version) for X-Mas because she'd been hyped up for the 2005 version to come out for months. Ever since it was released that they were making it, in fact. I knew she'd seen the original, but it'd been awhile.
We'd planned to see it on the 16th. Some of the release dates showed that, at least on the web. Then I found out it was a limited release-then the second date passed by, and still not out. At that point I concluded that it was one of those limited release films that would just never make it to our neck of the woods, and one day while shopping around for gifts I found that DVD (in the wrong place, no less), and decided it was serendipity and bought it. Then I found out that it WAS coming out, on 12-25-05, but we all watched it and loved it anyway.
Posted by aiua (Member # 7825) on :
My friend had a press pass for it almost two weeks before it was scheduled to come out and didn't know it was a special screening. Boy was she surprised. -jealous-
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
*sigh* Why the parallel threads?
::digs::
quote:I am a Mel Brooks fan, and own several of his movies.
I saw The Producers on Broadway this summer. Lane and Broderick weren't in it. Bialystock was played by Richard Kind (formerly in Spin City). I thought Kind was fantastic. He was the best thing about the show. I thought Springtime for Hitler was an absolute riot.
I thought the rest of the show sucked eggs. Way too much set-up for that payoff. I think Brooks at his best does more than just go after the cheap laughs. The cheap laughs are always there, but there's usually a deeper farce. In the first act of this play, it is not there. The jokes are cheap and easy sex jokes. (Look at her boobs and do a double take. Wait, that was way too subtle. Now look at each other and make a great big face. Now go get chased around by some old ladies while making faces to show how much you don't enjoy it.) The comedy of the first act was at the level enjoyed by millions every day--on Univisión. Everything after Springtime for Hitler was anticlimactic. The funny stuff had happened, and now we were just getting the necessary denoument. I looked at my watch often.
The best and worst of Mel Brooks's whole career is in this show. The stuff leading up to and including Springtime for Hitler is absolutely hilarious. Yes, the stupid laughs are there too, but it all functions on a deeper level than just the sight gags. The whole situation is just so absurd, so farcical, that it's brilliant.
But for the rest of it . . . I'd like most of my $100 back.
I can't for the life of me grasp how this show won more Tony Awards than any other show ever. I don't know what it was up against in 2001, but I can only imagine that it was a weak year. But knowing that it somehow did win ten or eleven Tonies, my review in a word is OVERRATED.
So, um, nope. I won't be watching this movie. Certainly not in a theater, in any case.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
LoL, sorry Joe. It's just that with HR and SR, mutual readership and postage is no longer guaranteed, and there are people whose opinions I want (you're among them) and who I'd like to see the movie in both.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
I absolutely love the original movie, and think it's hilarious. Usually I'm not a big fan of remakes, but I might give this one a chance. I do adore Nathan Lane in almost any role.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
If you like Nathan Lane Belle, I think it's safe to say you'll love the new film. Gobs and gobs of N.L.
Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
I haven't seen this new version, so I honestly can't comment on whether it's any good or not. But it certainly strikes me as unnecessary in a world where the first movie already exists. I sure do wish Mel Brooks would make a new movie. It's been ten years since his last one, and I'd really rather see him come up with something new than just re-hash something that was new almost forty years ago.
Also, Will Ferrell is in it. I would gladly pay double the standard ticket price to not have to watch Will Ferrell.
(Oh, and I don't know about Gene Wilder, but if I were in his position, I'd be feeling pretty annoyed right about now. First Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and now this. "What, my performances weren't good enough for you?" is what I'd be thinking.)
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I'm looking forward to this - maybe on Thursday. Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
What a fascinating picture. It is very, very different from the original, and the ways in which it is different are not insignificant. In fact, the two movies are about total opposites.
The first is a Bonfire of the Vanities about Broadway, and show business in general. It's an amoral vacuum, where what's shocking is not that Hitler is the subject matter of the show (a show produced by two Jews, something completely lost in the 2005 version) but that the only reason we are not making movies that celebrate Hitler is that they wouldn't make any money.
The second, on the other hand, is a celebration of Broadway. It's a nostalgic look at how things used to be, when it really was the common man's dream and even something like Hitler and the Nazi party find worth on the stage. (Was this intentional? Or is it just that the Mel Brooks of today, who Hollywood has been very good to, is unable to write something as scathing and dripping with contempt as the Mel Brooks of old? Around long enough to understand how everything works, but new enough to not have anything to lose).
What's too bad, though, is that while the makers of the 2005 version clearly understood this, they didn't take the time to tailor the scenes the old scenes to the new point. Mel Brooks is very honest about the fact that they were continually rewriting and re-shooting scenes in the original to find something that really worked with the actors he had, and too much of that is recycled on the shoulders of actors who are completely and utterly wrong for the original vision.
Which isn't to say that the 2005 version is weaker. The cuts needed to be made and many of the additions are inspired. It misses Brooks' frantic editing. The script may be tighter, but the shooting is sloppy, and it gets too caught up in karaoke of the original rather than recreation (the fact that it must be set in the 60s was extremely problematic for the new version wasn't it?) which leaves the picture feeling confused. "Betrayed", of course, almost makes up for all the shortcomings on its own.
Anyway, if you're a theatre person rent the original, watch it, and then go and see this version. There's easily a thesis in comparing the two. And, y'know, the fact that they're both pretty good movies doesn't hurt.
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