Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

ShootingShark Frederick and Anna Bronski are husband-and-wife actors running a theatre company in Warsaw in 1939 when Germany invades Poland. By chance, they discover that visiting Professor Siletski is a Nazi agent with a crucial report on the resistance, and resolve to use all their acting skills to stop him getting those names to the High Command.This remake of the 1942 Ernst Lubitsch comedy classic is very faithful to its predecessor but is a hugely entertaining picture in its own right. What I like about it most is its terrific cast - Brooks and Bancroft seem almost made for these roles and both are sensational, as are the whole Bronski troupe. Matheson and Ferrer are suitably suave and slimy, but the real stars for me are Durning and Lloyd as Colonel Erhardt and his adjutant Schultz - you can basically never go wrong with a short fat man and a tall thin man as a comedy duo, but these two are hilariously mismatched. The scene where Bronski, disguised as Siletski, delivers his report to Erhardt and the two Nazis scream at each other is a masterpiece of comic bungling. This film's chief addition is Sasha, the gay dresser character, who would never have gotten past the Hays Code, but exemplifies the many moments where Brooks cleverly sprinkles the comedy with sharp reminders of the horrors it's lampooning. It also has much more of a musical element courtesy of a terrific score by John Morris and some funny numbers (who else but Brooks would open with Sweet Georgia Brown in Polish ?). There aren't many straight remakes I'm especially fond of, but this is a definite exception; it's funny, beautifully made, re-tells a great story and is a terrific showcase for the comic talents of its ensemble. Produced by Brooks, and deftly scripted by Thomas Meehan and Ronny Graham (the latter of whom plays Sondheim, the very loud stage manager).

MARIO GAUCI This is an unnecessary but not displeasing remake of Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 film, which is an undisputed classic (and one of my own all-time favorites). It turned out very faithful to the original: wisely, Brooks opted not to spoof what was already a black comedy – this may have had something to do with his decision not to write and direct the film himself.The fast-moving plot still works beautifully, though the jokes tend to fall flat – since they don't have the same immediacy of the wartime years, while the level of acting is far below that of the 1942 version. The remake adds sentimentality and the unfortunate inevitability of a gay stereotype; all in all, however, Brooks' earlier lampoon of Nazism in the form of the "Springtime For Hitler" set-piece in THE PRODUCERS (1968) was much more effective. There are, nonetheless, a couple of good songs here – while the original's gem of a final gag involving Hitler has been replaced by an equally priceless one.As I said, the leads are no match for Jack Benny and Carole Lombard from the 1942 version (and are overage to boot) – though it was certainly nice to watch real-life couple Brooks (who, unsurprisingly, gets to double as both Professor Siletsky and Hitler) and Anne Bancroft playing alongside each other for once. Still, Jose' Ferrer fills the old Stanley Ridges role more than adequately…but, then, Charles Durning makes for a poor substitute to Sig Rumann in the all-important role of Colonel "Concentration Camp" Erhardt (amazingly, Durning's rather forced performance here was nominated for an Oscar!).

edwagreen This remake of the classic Jack Benny-Carol Lombard film is even better than the original.Made with the comic gift of Mel Brooks, the film really shines. Where else but with Brooks would we hear the line-"My cousin Rivka got burned out?" Where else would you hear Sweet Georgia Brown sung in Polish?As famous thespians in pre-war Poland, the two are trapped with the Nazi invasion in 1939. Jose Ferrer is marvelous in the role of a professor who is really a Nazi trying to get a list of third columnists.With all this going on, the Bancroft character has been having an affair with officer Tim Matheson, who becomes part of the plot to get Ferrer before he can bring the list to Nazi headquarters.Charles Durning, as Schultz, seizes the opportunity in a completely off the wall performance as a dumb German officer. He could have easily been in "Hogan's Heroes" after this one.The escape scenes with the entire acting troop are hilariously done. A homosexual character is absolutely fabulous as he seeks refuge from the Nazi terror.There is laughter every step of the way up to Brooks dressing up like Hitler as their plane lands into an English bar and Brooks walks in saying, "Is this England?"Truly a romp and a great one at that.

tedg The older I get, and the more I am exposed to great ideas in film, especially comics in film, the less I tolerate Brooks.That's because he isn't a filmmaker. Never was. He's a vaudevillian, a stage comic. Now, that can be funny, and I suppose he's good at what he does. But there's a magic in cinema, in cinematic humor that bites deeper. Movies have a solvent when done right, a solvent that allows the humor to catalyze change.When you're on a stage, we expect the performer to be different, remote. We even laugh at the remoteness.Consider the film humor of embarrassment. We have a whole industry based on that, dozens of movies a year. They work because we enter the thing and feel embarrassed. That'll never happen with Brooks because he sees these as filmed stage shows.If you watch this, what you'll get is a rather clever acknowledgment of this. At root it is a simple structure: real world with Nazis, stage show with Nazis. (And of course, we chuckle, knowing Brooks' claim to fame is "Springtime for Hitler.") And as the thing goes on, we have the stage show and reality blurring from both ends.Brooks "plays" certain Nazi characters. And as time goes on the Nazis get more and more like stage characters. One device is rather sophisticated, where the real Nazi is made (by Brooks) to appear as a fake. And yes, Jews escaping as clowns from a pretend truck to a real one.At the center of all this is a valentine from Brooks to his wife. She's allowed to mug, and be the irresistible love interest to all heterosexual men, good and bad.If you go into this for laughs, you'll be disappointed. If you go into it as an essay on humor on the stage, you'll find it pretty darn impressive, worthy of the guy who introduced David Lynch to us through "Elephant Man."Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.