The Producers

Though The Producers represents the first feature-length Mel Brooks film musical, he's been writing funny songs for years. Who could forget "The Inquisition" song from History of the World Part 1? His style of comedy lends itself to the form - he likes broad schtick, mugging, physical comedy, prop gags, outsized caricatures...all the trappings of the classic Broadway farces. So he's a more likely candidate than most to turn one of his classic films into a stage musical comedy.

I know the thing got great reviews when it premiered in New York. Even the version that came to LA, with Jason Alexander and Martin Short as Max and Leo, was well received on its debut here. So maybe on stage it all works better. Maybe the stagecraft was particularly impressive or the vibe and energy of the proceedings outweighed the worn-over vaudeville hijinks. Whatever made that version work, it hasn't translated to film, and what's left isn't pretty.



A word about offensive comedy. There's just about no topic so horrible and taboo that you can't, in the right context, make light of it. If you can come up with a concept so offensive that you think there couldn't possibly be any way to make it funny, you should write a sketch about it and send it to Lorne Michaels. Cause he'll probably hire you at this point.

But if the jokes aren't funny and creative, suddenly you're just being an offensive, intolerant jerk. I'm not saying that's fair...it's just the way these things work.

The Producers is painfully unfunny. It's that kind of awkward unfunny, where you can tell everyone's trying really hard and nothing connects and you start to feel bad for the performers even though they shot this thing far away in a studio months ago and don't give two shits what you think about their work.

So because it's not funny, it feels kind of wrong. Not in a "how dare you!" kind of way, but in a "why bother bringing up Nazis if this is all you're going to bother doing with them?" kind of way. It's depressing to see something so hackneyed, so juvenile and so pointless, and the fact that it's relentlessly homophobic, misogynist and mean-spirited doesn't help to make it more appealing.

For those of you not familiar with the old movie or the stage show or the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode in which Larry David stars in the stage show, a brief recap:

Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) was once the King of Broadway, but has now fallen into poverty after a string of flops. He's visited by an uptight, nervous accountant named Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick) and together they devise a get rich quick scheme. Produce a massive flop on the cheap and then skip town with the investors money before anyone's the wiser. So, of course, they create a jolly Neo-Nazi musical called "Springtime For Hitler."

When Brooks released his original film of The Producers, starring the incomperable (seriously) Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, the notion of a Nazi musical comedy was still pretty transgressive. My grandmother to this day will not watch it, finding the very notion of laughing at Hitler or the Third Reich repulsive. After watching this latest incarnation of the project, I'm starting to see her point.

Nevertheless, the original film succeeded in part because it was a little bit offensive. Brooks turns on its head the outsized imagery of the Third Reich and the spectre of Nazism in our culture (it essentially stands in for everything evil and anti-American), and deflates the very notion of fascism. How can you rule a people through awe-inspiring propaganda when the very pageantry and ritual that makes this awe-inspiring propaganda possible also makes you look so ridiculous?

Mainly, though, I would say the original Producers succeeds on the backs of Mostel and Wilder, two of the most lively, energetic and committed comic performers of their day (and possibly in cinema history). When you see other, talented but less ingenious performers like Lane and Broderick take on the roles, that's when you truly realize how much Mostel and Wilder brought to the characters in their day.

Broderick in particular fails to rise to the occasion, turning in a surprisingly rigid, rehearsed performance as the nebbishy Leo Bloom. Between his many affectations and his overdone, clipped manner of speech, Broderick has rendered the character a screechy, irritating mess. Though he performs most of the dance moves technically well (at least, as far as I can tell), there's not really any grace in movement on display. Lane doesn't dance so much as sashay through the film, but at least he seems comfortable in his own skin.

For some reason, Brooks has altered Leo's story, making him a more active player in the scheme but also robbing him of the innocence that made the Wilder performance work in the first place. Again, people loved these guys in these parts on stage, so I can only think that the fault lies somewhere in the translation of the play to the screen.

Other changes don't fare much better. Whereas the director in the original Producers film was a feminine hippie caricature named LSD, delightfully played by Dick Shawn, the musical version features an extremely flamboyant gay director and his even more extremely flamboyant gay assistant (Gary Beach and Roger Bart). In what may be the low point of Brooks' career as a writer, we get a horrifying musical number called "Keep it Gay," in which the two fruits and all the other degrading Village People-inspired homosexual stereotypes they have hanging around their mansion dance around suggestively in goofy costumes.

I'd like to restate that I'm not saying you can't make fun of gay people. When Big Gay Al first appeared on "South Park," I found him hilarious. But you've got to have something in your arsenal aside from cliched observations like "homos have limp wrists" and "the gays dress up like ladies." I mean, are we 12? Mel Brooks looks like an old man, but now I'm not so sure.

(I'd also like to state, for the record, that the film musical made with the cooperation of the Village People, Can't Stop the Music, should really be seen by each and every patriotic American. Did I mention it also stars a young Steve Guttenberg?)



The credited director of this debacle is not, in fact, Mel Brooks but Susan Stroman, who directed the stage production. This is her first film and I'm not sure she should bother with another, having no discernable ability to frame action, pace a comedy sequence or devise a single memorable shot or cinematic moment. Why is her camera so static? This is supposed to be a lively, fun musical and half of the shots are straight ahead in front of the actors, as if Stroman's trying to simulate what it would be like to have front-row seats for the stage show.

I don't want to see what someone in the Orchestra Pit would see. If I wanted that, I'd become a goddamn cellist. I want to see a movie that feels like a movie, not like a show that someone caught on tape from a relatively-clean vantage point.

I mean, really, no attempt has been made at all to actually translate this work into a different medium. Some big film stars have been cast in supporting roles - like Will Ferrell as the playwright and Uma Thurman as Bialystock's bombshell Swedish secretary - but seem to play the parts safely without adding much of their own personalities. (Thurman in particular kind of buries all of her idiosyncratic charms to play a straight-up bimbo, and can't keep up the Swedish accent at all during the songs). Even the lighting changes are obviously cribbed from the show.

And about those songs...Brooks has never been a tremendously talented lyricist. With a few notable exceptions (the brilliant Marlene Dietrich riff "Tired" from Blazing Saddles), the songs are usually built around a central funny joke rather than overflowing with terrific one liners. The songs here are sometimes funny. Amusing lines absolutely find their way in, and Lane in particular squeezes them for every last possibly comic morsel. But everything is being played so broad, it's so impossible to follow this mess as a story, the songs become joke repositories. They don't move forward the action, they don't give you insight into any characters (what characters?). They're just there because it's a musical and you gotta have songs.

When Max and Leo go to visit Franz Liebkind (Ferrell) to buy the rights for "Springtime for Hitler," he makes them do a traditional German dance with him. Why? Because we need a funny German-style musical number. But this whole sequence is simply inert. Why does Franz assume they will know a traditional German dance? Wouldn't he just be glad that someone wants to buy his play and spread the word about Hitler's greatness? The scene has no point, lingering well past its welcome in the hopes that there will be some hilarious jokes. Then, when there's only a few meager funny moments, it's like 10 whole minutes of an overlong movie has been wasted and the momentum has screeched to a halt. (And a movie like this is all momentum.)

Word is that Brooks has plans to revisit Young Frankenstein as a musical. I think I should either go see this one when it premieres at the Pantages or just skip the movie altogether, because this is clearly no way to appreciate the project. Yikes.