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I suppose if anything epitomizes the style of Mel Brooks it is audacity, obscenity and a forthright quality that others seem either reluctant to use or often overplay with disastrous results. Brooks will do anything for a laugh. Anything. He is, for all intents and purposes, incapable of embarrassment. He's a rabble-rouser. His movies abide in a world in which everything is likely, especially the outrageous, and Silent Movie, where Brooks makes a bountiful aesthetic gamble and pulls it off, makes me laugh abundantly. On the Brooks calibration of amusement, I laughed not too radically more or less than at Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles or The Producers. It just doesn't have the subversive and ironic panache of those classic films.

Brooks' fifth film as director, Silent Movie is streamlined fun. It's obvious in almost every shot that the filmmakers had a party making it. It's set in Hollywood, where Big Pictures Studio lurches on the brink of Chapter 11 and a merger with the mammoth Engulf and Devour syndicate, a daintily disguised reference to Gulf+Western's Paramount takeover. Enter Mel Funn (guess who), a has-been director whose career was stopped cold by drunkenness, who pledges to salvage the studio by persuading Hollywood's biggest stars to make a silent movie. This is a scenario that results in countless inside jokes, but the thing about Brooks's inside jokes is that their outsides are funny as well.

The wild bunch of Mel, Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman embark to charm the superstars, resulting in the shower of one, who counts his hands, confused, and discovers he has eight; and swooping another out of a nightclub audience. There are several "actual" stars in the movie, but the fun is in not knowing who's next. Everything transpires surrounded by a glossary of sight gags, classic and original. There are bits that don't work and durations of up to a minute, I guess, when we don't laugh, but a minute can feel pretty long. Perhaps it is Brooks' desire to control all that displaces an objective view of what will work.

Nevertheless, in a movie overflowing with skillful Chaplin-, Keaton- and Laurel and Hardy-inspired set pieces, these parts are the chef d'oeuvre: Right before seeing the Studio Chief, Mel and his friends cross their fingers for good luck, and Mel can't uncross his. He shakes hands with the Chief, and the Chief's fingers are crossed rather than Mel's. The Chief then passes this crossed state to his secretary's fingers the same way. Another running gag is obvious discrepancy between the title cards and what the characters are really saying. The spoken lines are inaudible, as it is indeed a silent movie, but they can be clearly lipread. At one point Brooks asserts misgivings about DeLuise's idea of a silent movie by shouting "That's crazy!" as well as an agitated mouthful, but the screen says "Maybe you're right." In another scene, Marty hits on a nurse but gets slapped. When he gets back in the car, Mel obviously mouths a curse word, although the screen says "You bad boy!" And then there's the scene where Feldman and DeLuise haphazardly unplug and plug in his heart monitor various times, winding up changing the screen to a ping pong game and playing while the Chief flatlines and recovers over and over. Brooks stands outside the majority of Jewish comics and filmmakers in his lack of self-derision and in the success of his main characters, but still, humor is his own defense mechanism against the world, and he goes for broke.

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.

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.

A team of movie makers, Mel Funn (Mel Brooks), Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise) march into a film studio to speak to the chief (Sid Caesar).They've got a marvelous movie idea, that can't fail.They want to make the first silent movie in 40 years.So soon they're into the making process.They have to get the biggest stars there are in the show business.They're after Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, Liza Minnelli, James Caan, Anne Bancroft (Mel's wife) and Marcel Marceau, the mime.The crook of the story, Engulf (Harold Gould) does everything to stop the movie from being made.Mel Brooks made this extremely funny comedy in 1976.He made it completely silent, except for one little word said by the French mime. The comical work of Mel, Marty and Dom is something you don't have words for.They're not the only people in this film who deserve praises.Caesar and Gould are excellent and so are those who appear as themselves.Then I must mention people like Bernadette Peters, Carol DeLuise (Dom's wife) and Charlie Callas.Film maker Barry Levinson can also be seen there. This movie seems in some points like a real silent movie made in the 20's.Except this one comes with color.Mel and the gang do it as good as did comics like Chaplin,Keaton and Lloyd.The use of music by John Morris is marvelous.There is a huge amount of funny scenes offered in this flick.I almost laughed my lungs out when the trio tried to get in Liza Minnelli's table dressed in armors.That scene is one of many, which makes you howl from laughter and wake your neighbors. Thank God somebody had the courage to do a silent movie after all those years.That man was Mel Brooks.There is a talented young man who will go places.And remember; Silent Movie doesn't mean silent laughter.

Mel Brooks' comedies are made for the pure pleasure of having a good time and to enjoy what the master has decided give us in the way of sheer comic relief. His movies are a riot of visual and witty gags; they are completely insane. Granted, his humor is not for everybody, but those of us that appreciate this great man's talent, truly have a ball watching this picture about the lunacy in the movie industry, again and again.

Mr. Brooks and his sidekicks, Dom DeLouise and Marty Feldman do amazing things. Basically it's all visual, since there's no sound for the viewer to react to what one sees on the screen.

The guest cast is incredible as well. Anne Bancroft, Bernadette Peters, Paul Newman, James Caan, Burt Reynolds, Sid Caesar, and the rest appear to be having the time of their lives as Mr. Brooks pull the strings so we can have a great time.

This is a great film to watch with friends; the more, the merrier!