Review of The Producers (2005) by Markb. — 12 Jan 2006

About 4/5 of the way through this wan, seemingly endless adaptation of Mel Brooks' Broadway smash which was in turn an adaptation of his ourageous 1968 movie, crooked stage mogul Max Bialystock, in jail for matters too convoluted to discuss here, does a one-man song and dance relating everything that happened to put him there.

This little three-minute sequence actually features more genuine fun and entertaunment than most of thetwo-hours-plus surrounding it. That's largely because Nathan Lane, taking Zero Mostel's role in the original movie, is a stage performer who knows how to adapt his work for other venues; on screen he can be effectively bigger than life while keeping it absolutely real and believable.

That talent, sadly, has completely eluded Lane's partner-in-crime Matthew Broderick, who may have been just fine on Broadway, but is thoroughly synthetic and unconvincing in Gene Wilder's old film role; the bits in which Broderick clutches his "blue blankie" in moments of stress are particularly embarrassing.

Supporting performers Will Farrell, Roger Bart and Uma Thurman do pretty well, and I've heard comments that this is a perfect reproduction of the stage musical for people who never got to see it, but plays are plays and films are films, and I didn't pony up my $6.

50 (plus popcorn and soda) to see a photographed piece of theater; I paid to see a MOVIE, dammit! Director Susan Stroman and her crew give the phrase "nail your camera to the ground" a whole new series of dimensions; they do their jobs as though Brooks threatened to fine each of them $500.

everytime they moved the camera, included an inventive edit or did anything that was remotely cinematically interesting. Not only will this absolutely not do in the era of Chicago, but Stroman's embalming job makes me want to take another look at Rent; Chris Columbus' handling of Jonathan Larson's stage material may have been flawed, but at least he was clearly trying to make a real movie out of it.

Then again, The Producers in its newest incarnation has serious problems that range beyond Stroman's directorial decisions or lack of same, starting at the writing level: I'm fully aware that writers as prolific as Brooks almost inevitably tend to repeat their own tricks, but I was shocked at how many comic bits and dialogue snatches he appropriated from his other movies in addition to the original Producers (especially Blazing Saddles).

And the subject matter--two con artists putting together a sappy musical that's highly favorable to Adolf Hitler hoping for a mammoth flop followed by even more mammoth write-off wealth--was indeed daring and controversial in 1968.

..but the very fact that it WAS so phenomenally recycled as a piece of Great White Way comfort food perfectly indicates how completely time has passed this concept by. (It also explains why the big play-within-a-play production number, 'Springtime for Hitler', towers so much over the other, rather trite tunes, even though Brooks wrote them all: it's the only one that came from the original film.

) It's been said more than once that one of the intended aims of the American neoconservative movement is to completely erase the 1960s; judging from the 2005 holiday season's reduction of two of that decade's most groundbreaking and incendiary mass-audience films (The Graduate, trivialized in Rumor Has It.

.. and the original Producers) to vapid, easily-gummed milk toast, the neocons don't have to lift too many fingers to accomplish this particular goal; good old liberal Hollywood is already doing a lot of the job for them.