This is where comedic subjectivity is affirmed.

Rating: 4/10 (9 March 2014)

There comes a time in every critic's life, be it newspaper critic or online critic, syndicated or local, hobbyist or elitist, when he watches a highly-regarded classic for the first time and feels underwhelmed by it. He proceeds to write a not-so positive review of the film and what follows is a long-run of neverending hate-mail about the comment for the rest of his career.
If that's what my review of Mel Brooks' The Producers brings so be it. This isn't my first rodeo with not liking a relatively high- regarded classic. I proved not to be such a big fan of Easy Rider, the classic road movie that portrayed sixties culture in a way many found profound and accurate. My main reason for not loving that particular picture is because I found it "spoke to a generation that no longer had ears to hear it," and unless you're from the generation when big political and social changes began to take effect, chance are, it was an alienating and sometimes tedious film to indulge in.
That's a whole different complaint than the one about to make for Brooks' The Producers. Given Brooks limitless track record for uproariously funny and subversive comedies of yesteryear, I felt popping in almost any one of his films would be an immediate winner. The bottom line with The Producers is it's simply not that funny and never that interesting. Concerning a hack producer named Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and his neurotic accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), the film follows the two halfwits as they attempt to conjure up a travesty of a play when they run the math and realize that a bomb could work better for a producer than a hit in terms of shares and rights solicitation.
In efforts to produce a play that is destined to play for one night only, Max and Leo right and produce "Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden," a work that is labeled "a love letter to Hitler" written by an ex-Nazi Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars), which is German for "Frank Lovechild." The play turns out to be a musical, and to assure nothing but total and unprecedented chaos, the two producers decide to follow every step in the "what not to do" section in the unwritten book of performance art. They hire the wrong director, the wrong actors, pick the worst and potentially most offensive story, and find a writer who is four tires short of a car.
Mel Brooks does just about everything he can against the wall with The Producers and it's surprising and a shame to admit so very little of the humor actually sticks. To begin with, it's no denying Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder are extremely talented performers, but somehow, Brooks found the way to make both extremely tired, irritating, and tedious. This especially goes for Wilder, whose over-the- top neurosis exhausts itself well past the perimeters of being funny. Mostel, on the other hand, occasionally hits admirable strides, but his character is so blatantly selfish that it's difficult to watch him for very long let alone to side with him.
Furthermore, the ideas of satire are barely noticeable here - something the film should've set its sights on heavily. Instead, we get frequent vignettes of situations that aren't very funny simply because they're burdened by overacting and boring physical comedy. I never knew the latter words went together. Mostel and Wilder both have unbearable characters and, in return, give us somewhat unbearable performances.
Brooks has made a name for himself as one of comedy's great voice and, through some mystery far beyond anything I'm willing to conjure up at the moment, The Producers has become a staple in the comedy genre. It has earned its place on the American Film Institute's one- hundred best comedy films among many film critics' favorites as well. I conclude by saying that I don't expect my opinions to be agreed with or shared but at the very least respected. Sometimes I feel comedy is the most subjective of all genres because one thing that makes somebody laugh can make someone else uncomfortable or annoyed. The funny thing is I've seen films very similar to The Producers hit considerable highs. I suppose I'm just trying to figure out where it all went wrong here.
Starring: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, and Kenneth Mars. Directed by: Mel Brooks.