[3] There are a couple of Mel Brooks movies that I kinda like, at least a little bit, but for the most part, I don’t get them. The Twelve Chairs is no different. Frank Langella, Ron Moody, and Dom DeLuise are all running around trying to find a chair that has treasure sewn into its cushion. I didn’t care about the chair or its treasure, …
[4] When I ask myself why I like so few Mel Brooks movies, I think the answer has to do with character investment. Even in a parody movie, I still need it. There just isn’t much to latch onto here. Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride) makes a good-looking Robin Hood, but the character doesn’t really come to life at all. I sorta chuckled once or …
[7] Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft star as leaders of a Polish theater troop forced to entertain the Nazis while simultaneously plotting their escape to Allied territory. You might think the material is too heavy for a comedy, but To Be or Not to Be manages to stay light and breezy without being disrespectful. It certainly helps that most of the laughs come at the …
[6] Mel Brooks sends up Alfred Hitchcock in High Anxiety, a spoof centered around a psychiatrist who uncovers shenanigans at ‘The Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, VERY Nervous’. Brooks plays the shrink, a man who must cope with his own ‘high anxiety’ while getting to the bottom of a murder mystery before the Institute’s nefarious head nurse and former administrator order him killed! Cloris Leachman …
[5] Three charlatan filmmakers try to save a studio from corporate takeover by uniting all of Hollywood’s biggest stars into one big movie — a silent one! And the title of this Mel Brooks yuk fest isn’t an empty boast — Silent Movie is indeed devoid of dialogue, though not without plenty of whacky sound effects and an energetic score by John Morris. At first, …
[9] Jim Henson’s Muppets make the leap from television to the silver screen in this comedy-musical road trip across America that shows us how the foam and felt vaudeville troupe found each other and entered show business. We meet Kermit playing banjo in a swamp, inspired by a passing agent to go to Hollywood. Driven by the desire to entertain and make people happy, Kermit …
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