The poor dozers

Noel Vera

Talk about pointless--why bring the overblown, overextended musical
remake of a fairly satisfying Mel Brooks comedy to Manila screens a
year later, when all the excitement (what little there was--it
couldn't make the cost of its $45 million production budget back
during its American theatrical run) died down? Or are they trying to
squeeze yet another ounce of soured milk from a cow not just dead
but rotting?

Not crying "sacrilege!" exactly; Mel Brooks' "The Producers" isn't a
great comedy--too obvious and crude, and likes to think it's more
shocking than it really is--but it does feature a pair of memorable
performances in Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock, Broadway impresario
reduced to wearing cardboard belts, and Gene Wilder as Leo Bloom,
mousy accountant with a thing for little blue blankets. Watching the
new version with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the
aforementioned roles on DVD I kept turning the sound up, thinking
their voices were too soft, too subdued, too weak overall; gradually
realized that Lane and Broderick are actually giving reasonably
intelligent and even at times inventive readings (sometimes
parodying the originals). The problem isn't with these two fairly
talented actors; the problem is the thought of Mostel and Wilder
together, burning a ragged hole on the big screen: you need to turn
up the volume to even try drowning out their memory.

Could cite a dozen examples of Lane and Broderick trying and failing
to top Mostel and Wilder, but off the top of my head there's the
scene early in the picture where Lane begs Broderick to cover the
few thousand dollars he inadvertently pocketed. "Bloom, I'm reaching
out to you. Don't send me to prison," he tells Broderick,
kneeling. "Help!" Amusing enough, unless you recall Mostel bending
down close to Wilder's ear, the better to deliver an intimate
whisper: "HEEEEELP!!!" he says; Wilder's eyes cross from the sheer
volume of the yell.

It's not just the leads, of course, though they're my biggest
complaint; the supporting cast has been drastically toned down and
worse, rendered sane, where not completely eliminated. Gone are
Madelyn Cates' concierge with the honking Brooklyn accent ("He keeps
boids. Doity, disgustin', filthy, lice-ridden boids"), and Dick
Shawn's spacey Lorenzo St. Dubois ("Lorenzo, baby. Lorenzo St.
DuBois. But my friends call me L.S.D."). Will Ferrell's Franz
Liebkind is a pale imitation of Kenneth Mars' crazed original,
slapstick dance number notwithstanding, and Uma Thurman's Lulla is a
huge buildup for a character that should really have remained a
running gag (and one that distracts you from the central
relationship between Bialystock and Bloom).

Not all the changes are for worse--Gary Beach's Roger De Bris gives
Christopher Hewett's a run for the money (even if Beach flubs
Hewett's long-gown entrance); his accidentally break as the
musical's Hitler isn't all that funny (compared to Dick Shawn's
("Hey, you're a German!" "We're all Germans." "That's right! Huh--
that means we can NOT invade Germany!"), but Beach shows such
startled and sincere joy at being the star of the show (instead of
the catalyst for its failure) he wins you over anyway. There's a
lovely number involving a dozen or more old ladies tap-dancing their
walkers that's easily the single most inventive moment in the
picture, and an amusing jail scene involving Lane recapping the
whole story where his Bialystock character finally comes into its
own (unfortunately it's too little, too late). Brook's original
clocked in at a slim 88 minutes; this one lumbers along at an
elephantine two hours and fourteen, generously padded with numbers
that literally stop the show dead (and aren't all that funny,
lyricswise or slapstickwise). Maybe the best schticks are lifted
straight from the original with little modification ("I'm wet! And
I'm STILL hysterical!"), but my favorite moments are the additions
(the walker dance, Beach's musical debut, Lane's recap) because they
aren't so deathly familiar. Still too little, too late, though.

Does not help that the director, Susan Stroman, has a longer resume
as choreographer than film director. Always thought Brook's original
was one of the sloppiest, most slovenly pieces of direction I've
ever seen; Stroman manages to enjoy a larger budget and better
technical gloss and still seem clumsier in comparison. She keeps her
distance when she should come in close, holds the shot when she
should cut away, and fails to shake the theatricality out of the
actors--they pause and look towards the camera, as if waiting for
the laughter to die down. Brooks knows nothing about being a film
director except maybe the timing necessary to make a joke funny;
Stroman, incredibly, knows even less, which kills most of the jokes
right off.

A movie's in trouble when its big production number, "Springtime for
Hitler," a parody of the Third Reich and of Broadway numbers
supposedly so bad it closes the show on opening night, turns out to
be the best thing in the picture (despite the fact that, again,
Brooks' original version moved the gags in and out faster and with
less fuss). Which brings everything back to the original question--
why this movie, a year later? Why a movie version at all? Why a
musical out of a reasonably funny comedy in the first place? Did the
producers maybe raised $100 million instead of forty-five, hoping to
pocket the difference when the movie flopped?

(First printed in Businessworld, 7/28/06)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)