The Producers (Special Edition)
by Mel Brooks
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anne Ives, Christopher Hewett, Gene Wilder, William Hickey, Zero MostelDirector: Mel Brooks
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
Published: 2002-12-01
DVD Release Date: 2002-12-03
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of The Producers (Special Edition)
Movie Review: Inspired
Summary: 5 Stars
How could anyone not love this film? "The Producers", made back in 1967, was Mel Brooks' first movie. The basic plot is, by now, well-known: Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel), a down-on-his-luck theatrical producer, and Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), his mousy accountant, concoct a scheme to deliberately put on the worst play in Broadway history and thereby bilk the investors (a bunch of rich little old ladies) out of millions. Their vehicle for calculated failure? A play called "Springtime for Hitler" written by a Franz Leipkin, a crackpot ex-Nazi, quite literally on the run from the U.S. State Department. Their choice for director is Roger Debris, a looney-tunes transvestite who is attracted to Leipkin's play because it's a departure from musicals and a chance to do straight drama (Debris: "I never knew that the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean it's just drenched in historical goodies like that!") Next is casting: they choose as their lead a Jim Morrison wannabe by the name of Lorenzo Say Dubois (LSD). The opening night "Springtime for Hitler" production number is just brilliant. It lives up to every expectation: it's absolutely the worst, the most vulgar, foul, tasteless, obnoxious and offensive production in the history of musical theater. It's just the ultimate parody of a Broadway show: what if somebody decided to do a musical about the life of Adolph Hitler? As the shocked and insulted opening-night audience is filing out of the theater, LSD, dressed as the Fuhrer, is found onstage with Eva Braun. He says something to her. Somebody laughs. Slowly, the audience begins to file back into the theater. And this is where this movie reveals its genius: Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom set out to make a deliberate flop. The result was something that was so bad, so horrible, so mind-bogglingly awful ... that it's actually funny. In other words, they made something that's so bad, it's good. They set out to produce a failure ... and failed at it, inadvertently producing a success. That's the genius of this film. High concept just doesn't get any higher than this. Mel Brooks won the Oscar in 1968 for his screenplay for "The Producers" and deservedly so: every line from this movie is a quotable quote. Why on Earth do people waste their time memorizing lines from some mediocre, unfunny, little piece-of-fluff like "Caddyshack"? THIS is the movie from which you want to memorize lines: every line of this little comic gem-of-a-film belongs in the comedy section of Bartlet's Quotations: "Shut up! I'm having a Rhetorical Conversation!", "Will the dancing Hitlers please wait in the wings? We are only seeing singing Hitlers!", "You are the audience. I am the author. I outrank you!", and, of course, the immortal line, "Don't be stupid, be a smarty/ Come and join the Nazi Party!". "The Producers" is something special. I really believe that people who don't think that this movie is funny think that basically because they just don't understand it. "The Producers" is probably the most brilliant non-musical property to ever emerge from the culture of Broadway and the New York theater scene. "The Producers" is quite simply inspired, a work of pure comic genius.
Summary of The Producers (Special Edition)
Mel 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.\n 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.\n 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"Similar DVD Movies
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