I'm in pain and I'm wet

Rating: 7/10 (9 April 2006)

Behold: the auspicious beginnings of an otherwise overrated career!
The Producers, a funny enough depiction of some smarmy individuals, is only half the film it's said to be. Growing up I would hear of this film through older siblings and older family friends. Genius, they called it. Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin agreed, and, at the tender age of 14, I was impressionable. My hopes were set pretty high, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I was completely let down. My 14 year-old self said: "This is supposed to be better than Young Frankenstein? Really?" I thought Mssrs. Ebert and Maltin were yanking my chain. It was amusing in fits and starts, and Gene Wilder, as always, was wonderful, but... Where were the belly laughs? Where was the offending material?
The film follows Max Bialystock, a washed-up Broadway producer, who hits upon a scheme with wallflower accountant Leo Bloom that will fleece rich old women of their fortunes as they (the old women) fund a sure-fire flop--"Springtime for Hitler." It's a clever plot for a comedy, especially for a comedy produced in the late 1960s, but the humor is dated methinks. In 1968, the film might have been outrageous; today, it seems tame. It's still amusing and there's a chuckle here and there, but it doesn't hold up next to Young Frankenstein, a vastly superior comedy by Mr. Brooks.
I appreciate Mel's attempts to integrate allusions to Modernist fiction (Joyce and Kafka make appearances sort of) into a film reveling in adolescent humor, but I think it needs to take its humor an additional step. The musical numbers in Springtime still evoke a hearty laugh, but the buxom Ulla, well, isn't funny. Bialystock's trysts with old women seem quaint these days too. What Brooks once described as rising below vulgarity doesn't seem vulgar at all to these younger and, perhaps, more jaded eyes (and don't get me started on that Brooks quote--it's not clever but condescending and pretentious).
The Producers is good enough, but it wouldn't be until Young Frankenstein that Mel Brooks made a masterpiece--unfortunately, his only one. (As an aside, I would like to give this film a 7.5 out of 10.)