Timeless Comedy

Rating: Null/10 (7 August 2002)

In a day when Adam Sandler is called a genius, it makes you feel like a member of a special club to know about the classic comedians of the 60s. The Producers recalls a different time in hollywood comedy, when broad humor didn't mean that the audiences intelligence was insulted. When comedies weren't required to follow a formula (idiotic man-child meets girl, gets fooled by snobs/crooks, loses girl, beats snobs, gets girl). It recalls a time when comedy was the refuge of genuinely anarchic personalities.
Only Mel Brooks could think of the story, two crooks devise a plot to steal a million dollars by producing a flop play. The one that they come up with, Springtime For Hitler, shows up on the screen as a hilarious parody of the overproduced musicals of the 60s. The wildly unpredictable screenplay is, at times, almost unbearably witty. Some of the jokes are a bit dated; the hippy actor has intials that spell out LSD, the director's homosexuality is played for laughs (although the jokes are never as cruel as the gay jokes in, say, Revenge of the Nerds); but overall, the jokes still hit. Most comedy screenplays from 10 or 20 years ago have aged much more poorly.
But the films still wouldn't work nearly so well without its top notch cast. Gene Wilder proves himself to be among the finest comic actors of his generation as the manic depressive accountant. Zero Mostel, on the other hand, is hilarious as the unscrupulous producer, at times seeming like he is about to explode from greed, lust, and excitement. The supporting cast is also great, particularly Dick Shawn as LSD. You might balk at first, seeing the definitely middle aged Shawn playing a jive talking hippy, but both his flower power debut and his hipster portrayal of Hitler are riotous and dead on.
I'm sure that a lot of people, programmed to search for our standard movie formulas and stock jokes, are not going to get it. I will say you should give it a chance, no matter your age (I'm only 25, so I'm not the target audience here), and maybe you'll find something great.