Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Oy vey.
What happened? Admittedly, I’ve never seen the stage show, so perhaps this is a faithfully rendered film version of that musical, and fans will flock to it and find themselves deeply entertained, but if that’s the case, then I think I’m very, very glad I never saw it onstage, because I sort of hated this movie.
To be fair, I’m a huge fan of the original 1968 film. Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder had an amazing comic chemistry in that movie, and the entire thing felt genuinely dangerous. Mel Brooks was, for lack of a better word, hip. THE PRODUCERS played edgy in every way, whether it was the Nazi humor (which must have been more insane when it was still only a quarter-century after the Holocaust) or the performance by Dick Shawn as L.S.D. or even the outré camp of Roger De Bris and his assistant Carmen Ghia.
So why is it that this new version feels so painfully square, so toothless? Has the additional quarter-century since the first film dated the comic concepts that much? I mean, we’re now fifty years out from the Holocaust, and whole generations have grown up having no personal connection to those events, so SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER doesn’t carry the same punch for them. And the camp that played as hilarious in 1968 comes across now as incredibly dated and squirmy, even offensive. Or is it the fact that it’s been reimagined as a musical, requiring Mel Brooks and co-writer Thomas Meehan to inject a bunch of crappy ballads that stop the comedy dead? Or could it just be that Susan Stroman’s work as a director is so painfully devoid of visual invention that this feels like the worst kind of filmed play, static and claustrophobic?
Whatever the case, I found myself torn by THE PRODUCERS from the first scene, and I was never able to find enough in it to like for me to be able to recommend it. Considering how much I love the first film, this has got to be one of the year’s biggest disappointments for me.
Let’s start with Broderick and Lane, since this movie is all about them. I know they’ve won awards for their work. I’m aware of how many tickets the show has sold, and how gigantic they were in Broadway terms. You don’t need to explain to me the hubris of actually “reviewing” these performances at this point, because they’ve long since been canonized. I get it. But maybe that’s the problem. They’ve done this so many times that by the time they did it in front of the camera, it was... fossilized. Matthew Broderick in particular seems to have long since stopped actually performing the role. There’s a strange sort of autopilot that you can see in his eyes, like he’s somewhere else, counting a bathtub full of money, while his body goes through the motions. And it doesn’t help that his performance is so broad you practically need an extra lens to fit in all the ham. Nathan Lane at least seems to have found a way to make Max Bialystock into something unique to himself. Lane inhabits his role, and he’s generally pretty funny in the film. He can’t help that the play devolves into total pap in a few places. Lane doesn’t appear nearly as comfortable trying to make this cartoon world seem sincere for a few moments. He’s at home when he can let it rip.
Meanwhile, what Broderick’s done is a sort of faint echo of the great Gene Wilder’s work. It’s the second time this year we’ve seen a fairly accomplished actor try to step into Gene Wilder’s shoes, and it’s the second time they’ve failed. That’s a testament to just how brilliant and strange Leo Bloom was in that original film. His breakdown over his blue blankie is one of the great moments of Wilder’s career, and it immediately takes the film from a sort of Catskills-smirky thing to something unique... something dangerous. With Wilder on-deck as Bloom, anything can happen, and his terror makes perfect sense when he’s confronted with sweaty, freaky, equally-brilliant Zero Mostel. When Broderick plays the blue blankie scene and the resultant freak-out, I genuinely get the feeling he’s playing retarded. It’s like watching Cuba Gooding in RADIO. I’m not using the word as a pejorative; I think he really did make the decision to play Bloom retarded. He also gets saddled with the very worst of the songs, the sappy ballads, the personal reflection numbers that the whole show hinges on. Mel Brooks is great at writing joke songs. Funny songs. What he’s not so good at is writing heartfelt ballads, each of his playing as unbearable shmaltz.
Each of the other major players in the film deserves some sort of mention. Uma Thurman takes a nothing role as Ulla and turns it into... well... a really hot nothing role. I’ll admit it. I’m more smitten with post-divorce, post-KILL BILL Uma than I ever was with younger Uma. Her big number, “If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It” was probably the most entertaining thing in the entire film for me personally, because it was completely absurd, and Thurman throws herself at her song with total abandon. She’s not great, but she sure does try. Gary Beach is great as Roger De Bris, the director that Bialystock and Bloom hire to bring SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER to the stage, and so is Roger Bart as Carmen Ghia. The roles they’re playing... not so great. “Keep It Gay” is funny, but I can’t help but feel that Brooks isn’t sending up the ‘60s stereotype of the sissy so much as he’s simply perpetuating it. This movie’s idea of what’s edgy is thirty years out of date, so now it’s just sort of embarrassing, like when your grandmother talks about “the coloreds” at Thanksgiving dinner. Finally, there’s Will Ferrell as Franz Liebkind, the playwright and momentary star of SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER. His role’s been expanded from the original film in a way that doesn’t really work, except that it gives Will Ferrell a second song. I really miss the fact that there’s no L.S.D. in this version. He was one of my favorite characters. Then again, Dick Shawn’s just as hard to replace as Gene Wilder, so I can’t imagine who they would have gotten.
Susan Stroman may be a good choreographer. Personally, I don’t like much of the staging in this picture. It’s not memorable, and it rarely makes use of the real locations or the sets in any specific way. She’s not a good director, though, and I’d be surprised if she ends up making more movies. John Bailey and Charles Minsky are both listed as cinematographers on the film, but I’d be hard-pressed to believe this is the work of Bailey, a long-time vet who’s worked on some gorgeous films over the years. This movie’s flat, ugly, bright and garish. I don’t think she just shot the play from the third row of a theater. She tries to open it up. She’s just doesn’t have any particular knack for how to create energy in a sequence or how to draw you into a scene. The movie feels more like a mugging at times, like you’re being shaken in your seat while someone yells “YOU’RE BEING ENTERTAINED, DAMN YOU!”
If it sounds like I hold this film up to a high standard because of the original, I do. I also come to this film after hearing years and years of hype about how great this version was. Color me confused about the whole thing. I think this is a miscalculation, and I hope Mel doesn’t go through with YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN like he’s threatened. Leave the classics alone, Mel. You made three perfect films in your career, more than most people ever could, and now you’ve remade one of them badly. Don’t sully the reputations of the other two. Please?
I’ve got lots more stuff going up for you in the next day or so. Keep coming back. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
