The Critic

Mel Brooks, narrating as an old man, is watching a film where various geometric figures are projected. They aren't all that clever or interesting, and he says so. He is obviously annoying others, but if you accept art for art's sake you may be on his side. Anyway, it is fun and thought provoking.

'The Critic' shows some sort of modern art cartoon, where figures move and change in all kinds of colours. In the background we hear a man giving his ideas about what he sees, completely without a clue. Apparently the man is old and from Russia. The voice is from Mel Brooks.

Although it is only three minutes long, it contains more laughs than many feature comedies made today. Mel Brooks makes this cartoon hilarious. It is funny to consider that quite some people were actually thinking, when it came to modern art like this, the strange things he says. I highly recommend this Oscar winning cartoon.

After years of hearing of the short narrated by Mel Brooks as a very old man, I finally got to see The Critic on YouTube. All that abstraction and Brooks as an 81-year-old Jewish man from Russia about to die soon has got me in stitches! And that harpsichord music! If you've only known Brooks as the co-creator of "Get Smart" or the director of such movie classics as The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankinstein, and Spaceballs (I know some might dispute the last title) or as the 2,000-year-old man with straight man Carl Reiner, then I highly recommend you seek out The Critic on YouTube and hope someone puts it out on DVD soon! Also recommended to animation buffs especially Ernie Pintoff fans.

This short film by Ernest Pintoff is probably the funniest short ever made. It stars Mel Brooks as an Old Man from Russia who watches a series of abstract cartoons. He can make neither head nor tail of them, and comments outrageously the entire time, much to the disturbance of the other patrons. Here is some of the earliest Brooks humor, and already it keeps your rolling in the aisles! Produced in association with Brooks' Crossbow Productions (the precursor of Brooksfilms).

At first I didn't understand anything about the work (mainly because I'm Brazilian, I don't have subtitles and I still understand little English), however, when I listened more carefully and tried to know the context in which the work was conceived, I understood the message that is a joke with all of us lovers of the seventh art.