Review of Blazing Saddles (1974) by Blake P — 17 Aug 2011

One of the funniest movies ever made! Bart (Little) is a black railroad worker who is suddenly thrust into the job of being a sheriff for a town called Rock Ridge, a city which the governor (Brooks) plans on destroying.

The town, at first has a racist reaction to their first black sheriff, but when a gang lead by Hedley Lamarr (Korman) plans to take over the town, they warm up to him. And on the plus side, he has a has-been gunslinger (Wilder) on his side, but on the down-side, the gang hires sexy saloon singer Lili von Schtupp (Kahn) to distract him from doing his job.

What do you get when you get comedy greats Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, and Dom DeLuise working on the same movie? The answer is "Blazing Saddles". This is without a doubt the funniest western spoof satire out there, and is a must-watch for any film fan (it was ranked #6 on the AFI's list of funniest films ever made).

There's something very "Airplane"esque about it, and at the time time there's a bunch of Preston Sturges like one-liners that make this film so darn funny. Every performance is superb (especially Madeline Kahn's "Lili von Schtupp", which is seriously one of the funniest performances ever), and this is a heck of a well-written film, so why don't you just see "Blazing Saddles" and laugh your head off? I did.