Don't Be Stupid, Be a Smarty, Come and Join the Nazi Party

Rating: 10/10 (21 December 2005)

Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder aim Mel Brooks' bawdy jokes at the third balcony, and the result is one of the funniest movies ever made. As anyone who doesn't live under a rock by now knows, Mostel and Wilder play Max Bialystock, failing Broadway producer, and his hysterical accountant, Leo Bloom, respectively. When the two realize that they can make more money off a Broadway flop than they can with a hit, they set out to make the worst show ever made, and "Springtime for Hitler" is born.
The fun in "The Producers" is watching Max and Leo assemble their team of show-biz disasters. Not since Dorothy skipped down the yellow brick road on the way to Oz has a more colorful assortment of characters been added one by one to a film's cast. There's the play's author Franz Liebkind, who spontaneously bursts into the Nazi anthem and whose plans include world domination; Ulla, the Swedish tease, whose hips move independently from her torso and who Max meets in the public library; Roger DeBris, who thinks the third act of the play "has got to go" because the Nazis are losing the war; his "assistant" Carmen Ghia, who slinks around wearing a pointy beard and a monocle and who enjoys (maybe too much) his ride in the elevator with Max and Leo; and last but not least, Lorenzo St. DuBois, also known as LSD, who sings perhaps the film's funniest song, "Love Power," while wearing furry thigh boots and finger cymbals and which ends with him breaking a banana in half and sticking his thumb in his mouth.
The high point of the movie, of course, is the "Springtime for Hitler" production number, that includes dancing girls dressed as pretzels and beer tankards and includes lines like "We're marching to a faster pace/Look out, here comes the master race." Just the shot of the audience watching the show, their mouths hanging open in dumbstruck shock at its awfulness, is alone worth sitting through the movie for.
My only complaint with "The Producers" is really a compliment, and it's that there's not enough of it. The whole movie has a sketch-comedy feel, and each supporting character gets really no more than a big scene or two. I really wanted more of Roger and Carmen, and more of LSD. And of course it would have been great if Brooks had filled out "Springtime for Hitler" even more. Indeed, that number is such a show stopper that the movie deflates a bit after it's over and never quite recovers.
This is easily Brooks' best film, and it's wonderful to see such an unapologetically in-your-face comedy work so well. It's crass and crude and silly, yet remarkably intelligent all at the same time. If you don't come away with at least a dozen lines to quote, you weren't paying attention.
Grade: A+