comedy at its finest

Rating: 9/10 (2 March 2018)

Somewhat cynical and much-more-than-somewhat brilliant, "The Producers" may just be legendary humorist Mel Brooks' finest film. The performances are wonderfully ridiculous, the story is and goes all over the place, the satirical targets are aplenty, and the script is, simply put, absolutely fantastically extremely wonderfully hilarious! Zero Mostel is funny and perfectly pathetic as a greedy once-successful Broadway producer, who seduces (not in a sexual way, I mean seduces as in like, whatever read the rest of the sentence and you'll see) Gene Wilder (who is even better than Zero in his own performance, as a clearly mentally unstable man child who is easily manipulated into following a path of bizarre and quirky crime) to follow his lead into a life of immoral benefit off of one great scheme, the production and over financing of a play that is to be a surefire hit. Of course things go wrong!