La última locura de Mel Brooks

If you're a Mel Brooks fan, you've probably heard of SILENT MOVIE--and my advice is to see it if you haven't yet.

It's one of his more brilliant and inventive ideas and it gets the wacky screen treatment you expect from Brooks. Naturally, it's not really silent. There is a very well-timed background score (no, not a tinkling piano) and all of the thuds are vigorously heard on the soundtrack. But there's no dialog--you read the silly captions that replace the sound of voices, just as folks did way back when.

Sid Ceasar is a film producer that Mel has to convince to let him do a "silent movie". He agrees provided Mel hires well-known movie stars to give it box-office insurance. That's the gist of the plot which then has MEL BROOKS and DOM DeLUISE scouting around Hollywood for stars like Paul Newman, Liza Minnelli, James Caan and Anne Bancroft to star in the film.

It's full of the usual sight gags, the falls on banana peels, through trap doors, everything that happened in a Keystone Kops comedy. Maybe not the funniest Brooks caper but still loads of fun to watch with a brisk running time of 87 minutes.

When I think of Mel Brooks, I think raunchy. Who wouldn't, with scenes like the "Virgin Alarm" in "Spaceballs" and the chastity belt theme in "Men in Tights?" But this film is a nice departure from the usual Brooks fare. For one thing, it's a satire. While the three producers look for famous stars to be in their silent movie, they're simultaneously acting with the stars in a silent movie. Clever, eh?

Since the only line of dialogue in the movie is "Non!" by Marcel Marceau, cuss words were thankfully left out. It added some character to the movie, which played up the visual gags. My favorite part was the scene where the three producers walk briskly down the hall, hop, then walk briskly again. Shades of "The Wizard of Oz!" A nice little film.

When one speaks of Mel Brooks the talk immediately goes to either "Blazing Saddles" or "Young Frankenstein" or "The Producers." How often do you hear mention of "Silent Movie?" After watching this film again just yesterday I can say that this film is also a masterpiece and ranks on the same lines of the previous films.

"Silent Movie" is deceptively simple in plot. A washed up movie director (Brooks) comes up with an idea to make a silent movie to help save the studio that once employed him. Once given the okay by studio chief Sid Caesar, Brooks and his sidekicks Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise set out to find five superstars to help make the movie a hit. And that's all there is to it - plot wise. What Brooks does is fill every single scene with great ideas. Shots that have absolutely nothing to do with the story are thrown in to get a laugh. Brooks hits the bullseye most of the time. I don't think I went more then a minute without laughing throughout.

Another master stroke is John Morris' rousing score that fills the movie from beginning to end. Without it the movie would have failed. And, yes, it truly is a silent movie save for one spoken word which most people probably are aware of anyway. It's another classic Mel Brooks moment.

"Silent Movie" followed "Young Frankenstein" which followed "Blazing Saddles." It's safe to say Brooks was at his peak during this period. His quality of films began to dip after "Silent Movie" starting with the amusing but overblown "High Anxiety." But we still have this time period to savor when Brooks may have been the best (if not then equal to Woody Allen) comedy director of his time.

I see this described as a parody of silent comedies, and it's not. It's...just a silent comedy. I'm not sure how you parody comedies, but I don't think it ends up being just another example of the genre. Without getting into the sheer levels of chaotic anarchy of Blazing Saddles or the emotional pathos of The Producers, Mel Brooks made a consistently funny comedy, probably the straightest comedy of his career up to this point. It never reaches the heights of his previous work, but it is definitely and consistently entertaining.

The has been and former alcoholic Hollywood director Mel Funn (Brooks) has decided that he's going to make his comeback with his two friends, Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise), in tow. Together, they head to Big Pictures Studios to meet with the Studio Chief (Sid Caesar) to pitch Funn's idea of a silent movie to help save the studio. Beset by a threat from the evil conglomerate Engulf & Devour to purchase the studio, the Chief agrees to Funn's idea but only if he can get all of Hollywood's biggest stars to sign on.

And that's pretty much it. Funn, Eggs, and Bell go from one Hollywood star to the next in a series of gag filled set pieces to sign them on while the head executives Engulf (Harold Gould) and Devour (Ron Carey) try to foil the plans. And this is really what I mean when it's not a parody, it's simply an example of the silent comedy genre. Go back to some of the best examples, like Chaplin's City Lights, and that's pretty much what you have. A thin reed of a plot on which to hang a series of gag filled set pieces. Take the boxing match, for example, in City Lights. It's there because the Tramp needs to make some money, so he accidentally gets roped into a boxing match in which perfectly choreographed comedy is executed. It could have been anything else. It could have been the Trump opening a lemonade stand or the Trump getting roped into a high-level executive meeting, as long as there was a way for Chaplin to find comedy in that context. We get the exact same thing here.

The first star is Burt Reynolds. The three show up at his house, sneak into his shower, and then end up piled on top of each other in a three person high coat in order to try to get into the house after having been kicked out. It's all an excuse for a gag about Mel staying at the top of the coat, everyone tumbling down the hill to the road where Reynolds ends up at the bottom of the trench coat and a compactor running over everything in between. The second star is James Caan, and it's all about trying to keep balance in a wobbly trailer in between scenes of Caan's movie he's making then. The third is Liza Minnelli with the three men dressed in medieval armor and falling all over the place. The fourth is Brooks' wife Anne Bancroft, where the three sweep her off her feet at a club and she gets the opportunity to demonstrate her own physical comedy chops by crossing her eyes independently.

My favorite is the last, Paul Newman. Newman has a broken leg, in a wheelchair, in complete racing getup, and is next to his crashed racing car...at the hospital. When the three approach him in wheelchairs themselves, it breaks out into a mad chase through the hospital ending with Newman doing a daring jump off of a roof and then bringing up the idea of him being in the movie himself. It's madcap and wonderful with Newman just being charming.

Facing defeat, Engulf and Devour conspire to break Funn with sex, hiring the dancer Vilma Kaplan (Bernadette Peters) to break him so he can't make the movie. Eggs and Bell figure her out right as she decides that she loves Funn, creating a situation where Funn goes off the deep end but Vilma can help get him back to where he needs to be.

From beginning to end, it really is just a series of gags, and it's consistently amusing for what it is. I have a smile on my face from beginning to end consistently. It just never rises to the heights of hilarity or ends with any kind of catharsis. It's fun, through and through, and there's not too much more you can ask from a comedy.

Of course, only Mel Brooks could have the idea to make a silent movie in today's Hollywood. And silent it is-this isn't one of those films like "City Lights","Modern Times","Bean" or "Playtime" that uses background noises and dialogue. No, aside from the brilliant John Morris score, the film is completely silent. Being that this is a Mel Brooks comedy, this COULD be considered a downside. It is filled with sight gags, from a pregnant woman upsetting the balance of the back of the car; the reaction of the executives to Vilma Kaplan, the sultry spy; the video pong-game on the life support machine; and of course, the fly in the soup. Unfortunately, there are stretches where the action moves very slowly, without sufficient explanation. Also, the music score occasionally has very unpleasant, loud drum crashes to indicate when there is action, and these can be an unpleasant contrast to the surprisingly quietly recorded music score. If you want to hear the music score, you'd best buy the soundtrack, where it is clear of the drum/cymbal crashes. The soundtrack mixes bits and pieces of "The Emperor's Waltz"(Strauss) and "Jalousie"(Bloom-Gade) as well as "Babalu"(Lecuona-Russell). The cast includes six main guest stars, as well as character actors like Chuck McCann, Jack Riley, Howard Hesseman and Fritz Feld. On top of this, Harry Ritz of the Ritz Brothers, Henny Youngman, and even Barry Levinson (DINER,HOMICIDE:LIFE ON THE STREETS) as a movie executive. All in all, it makes for genial entertainment and if nothing else should be seen to gain an appreciation of silent comedy. As a movie, it gets a 8/10. For a Mel Brooks film, it gets 7/10 on the Laff scale.