The Producers (Deluxe Edition)
by Mel Brooks
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anne Ives, Christopher Hewett, Gene Wilder, William Hickey, Zero MostelDirector: Mel Brooks
Brand: TCFHE/MGM
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); German (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-12-13
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of The Producers (Deluxe Edition)
Movie Review: The one that started it all
Summary: 5 Stars
Mel Brooks made a typically noisy directorial debut with this joyously insane comedy which dares to affront its audiences with crookedness & crassness. I imagine by the way this film comes across, it made quite an impact with 1968 audiences, and its loony storyline continues to entertain audiences today (i.e., the smash Broadway musical & its film adaptation). Brooks originally intended it as a novel, but then it just didn't work out, and the piece morphed from stage play to screenplay. Lucky for us!
The pairing of the late Zero Mostel & screen newcomer Gene Wilder was a casting match made in heaven. No one goes into hysterics quite like Wilder, and Mostel is a wondrous force of nature who blows through the picture. The two played off each other beautifully. The great comic actors Kenneth Mars & the late Dick Shawn were nothing less than perfection in their roles of the nutty German playwright & the hippie-ish actor L.S.D., miscast (on purpose) as Hitler, respectively (the latter's audition selection of the song "Love Power" is really something else). And the shots of stunned, shocked faces of the audience during the "Springtime for Hitler" opener is an unforgettable comedy moment.
I saw the recent Nathan Lane-Matthew Broderick starring remake of "The Producers" movie, so it was interesting to compare the two films. My opinion? The latter is a more fully realized production from the original. But few films can match the sheer comic energy of the original. It remains an offbeat classic, an indication that Brooks was just beginning to unleash his comic talents on us...fortunately!
Summary of The Producers (Deluxe Edition)
A "startling, stunning, outrageous [and] breathtaking debut" (Los Angeles Times) from acclaimed writer/director Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs), this Oscar?-winning* comedy combines "pure pell-Mel lunacy [and] wild, ad-lib energy [into an] uproariously funny" (Time) film! Low-rent Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and his high-strung accountant, Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), discover that, with the help of a few gullible investors, they can make more money on a flop than on a hit! Armed with the worst show ever written ("Springtime for Hitler") and an equally horrific cast, this double-dealing duo is banking on disaster. But when their sure-to-offend musical becomes a surprise smash hit, they find themselves in the middleof a Broadway blitzkrieg! *1968: Original ScreenplayMel Brooks's directorial debut remains both a career high point and a classic show business farce. Hinging on a crafty plot premise, which in turn unleashes a joyously insane onstage spoof, The Producers is powered by a clutch of over-the-top performances, capped by the odd couple pairing of the late Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, making his screen debut.
Mostel is Max Bialystock, a gone-to-seed Broadway producer who spends his days wheedling checks from his "investors," elderly women for whom Bialystock is only too willing to provide company. When wide-eyed auditor Leo Bloom (Wilder) comes to check the books, he unwittingly inspires the wild-eyed Max to hatch a sure-fire plan: sell 25,000 percent of his next show, produce a deliberate flop, then abscond with the proceeds. Unfortunately for the producers (but fortunately for us), their candidate for failure is Springtime for Hitler, a Brooksian conceit that envisions what Goebbels might have accomplished with a little help from Busby Berkeley.
Truly startling during its original 1968 release, The Producers does show signs of age in some peripheral scenes that make merry at the expense of gays and women. But the show's nifty cast (notably including the late Dick Shawn as LSD, the space cadet that snags the musical's title role, and Kenneth Mars as the helmeted playwright) clicks throughout, and the sight of Mostel fleecing his marks is irresistibly funny. Add Wilder's literally hysterical Bloom, and it's easy to understand the film's exalted status among late-'60s comedies. --Sam Sutherland
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