From Judd Apatow, a fawning two-part documentary on iconoclastic funny man Mel Brooks; his rise from hardscrabble Bkln boyhood to WWII army service, then comedy sketch writer for tv’s Sid Caesar, ‘The 2000 Year Old Man’ LPs with BFF Carl Reiner, near idyllic marriage to Anne Bancroft (Beauty and the Boychik); the great (and not so great) series of comedy films as writer/director/star (along with straight stuff he only produced). Then a dry patch followed by career resurrection on B’way with smash musical adaptation of his first film THE PRODUCERS; and lastly, baggy pants éminence grise pushing 100. The film no more than an elegant cut & paste clip job, with interspersed interviews from collaborators (that’s where most of the fawning comes in). Fine & informative, just be aware there’s nearly four hours of it. Nice to see underrated titles like THE TWELVE CHAIRS/’70 and HISTORY OF THE WORLD: PART ONE/’81 (his most ‘serious’ work) given attention.* Though it’s a bit cheeky of Mel to go on about being the first to take down Hitler with laughs when Ernst Lubitsch did it four decades before him, while we were still at war, in a film Brooks himself remade! TO BE OR NOT TO BE/’42; ;83.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Some Brooks titles have improved with age, but YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN/’74 still tops. Best directed too, thanks to its physical attachment to the James Whale original. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/02/young-frankenstein-1974.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Lots of archival material that let you compare & contrast interviewers. Who is that British gal who doesn’t let her guests get a word in edgewise. Yikes! Mike Douglas gently riding roughshod as needed. Dinah Shore babbling away. Tom Snyder pronouncing judgement. Fun!
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