mike48128
A "9" because I am a Mel Brooks fan. The same basic story and script as the 1942 classic, but not a scene-for-scene remake, as reported by several others. Mel Brooks and Ann Bancroft reprise the roles made famous by Jack Benny and Carole Lombard. Mel Brooks plays a "Ham" of a Jewish Polish actor just barely making a living in a little theater in Poland. ("He is doing to the theater what Hitler is doing to Poland.") His wife is even more famous than him. Several good performances by many supporting actors, most notably Christopher Lloyd as "Schultz",and his commanding officer, the bumbling Col. Erhardt (Charles Durning). Based almost entirely on the comic devise of mistaken identity, Mel gets to play the three performances of his "Polish career", as a turncoat Nazi spy, Col. Erhardt, and even Adolf Hitler! There are two cute song and dance numbers, including "Sweet Georgia Brown" in Polish! In the end, the spy is shot by Ann Bancroft's "lover", and everyone flies off to England in Hitler's airplane. Several script changes from the 1942 original include: Col. Erhardt does not shoot himself, and "Hitler" (Mel Brooks) does not parachute into Scotland. Also missing here is "Hitler" (in the Jack Benny version) ordering the Nazis to jump out of the airplane without parachutes, as the plane is overweight. More plot exposition than the original, which makes it easier to follow, but not quite as funny. Be sure to see both versions to draw your own conclusions. There is a one-line "gag" with a stagehand named "Sondheim" (Ronny Graham) just so Mel can use the line "Send in the Clowns" in the movie! I love both versions of this film.
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).
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.
MartinHafer
Jack Benny did a few really good films--such as THE MEANEST MAN IN THE WORLD and TO BE OR NOT TO BE. Despite that he often made fun of his film career, he was pretty good when he played something other than "Jack Benny". And, in this version of TO BE OR NOT TO BE, Mel Brooks, instead, plays the lead. And, he does a competent job. The problem is, Jack Benny did such a good job in the original, why remake the film in the first place? I would have been a lot happier if they had just re-released the original to the theaters once again. Although, I must admit that Brooks is unusually restrained and does show respect for the material.So my advice: watch this film and then see the VERY SIMILAR original.
AD
