Brooks at his best

Rating: 10/10 (27 May 2001)

A Mel Brooks film. That identification alone makes a film worth checking out.
He made his biggest reputation as a parodist: "Young Frankenstein" and "Blazing Saddles" are classics that the current crop of pretenders should study.
In one, he deftly parodied the scenes and situations of a specific series: the Universal Frankenstein movies. And in the other, he takes on the cliches of a particular genre.
It occurs to me that "The Producers" comes to us as a parody of a form as well: all those backstage story movies. Richard O'brien said that this would be the setting of the third of his "Rocky Horror" movies.

Mel Brooks got there first, Richard.