Dir. Susan Stroman, US, 2005, 134 mins
Cast: Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, Will Ferrell
Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick recreate the roles they played on the Broadway stage with Susan Stroman again doing double duty as choreographer and director. The show was virtually sold out in London when it opened here towards the end of last year, but when Richard Dreyfuss dropped out of the role of Max Bialystock and Nathan Lane was brought over to step in, I was overjoyed and rushed to get a ticket. So I can tell you that the film version sticks pretty closely to the stage show, albeit opening it out a bit and making it a very good pastiche of the great MGM musicals of the 50s. It is also the epitome of old style vaudevillian showbiz - broad farce, full of glittering pizzazz, cringe makingly bad good jokes and joyously irreverent political incorrectness.
Just in case you've somehow managed to miss all of the zillions of words that have been written about "The Producers", the story of down on his luck Broadway producer Max Bialystock and his meek and neurotic accountant Leopold Bloom, who innocently suggests to Max that you could make more money from a flop show than a hit, first saw the light of day as the 1968 film of the same title, written and directed by Mel Brooks with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder playing the leads. The show the duo put on is "Springtime for Hitler", the world's worst taste ever musical about the Third Reich. Only problem is Broadway audiences perceive the show as a hilarious spoof and it becomes for Max and Leo a disastrous hit. Brooks then came up with the idea of turning it into a stage musical, which hit Broadway in 2001. And now comes the movie.
Nathan Lane and Max have now become almost one. He is brash, lustful, ruthless, particularly in pursuit of the money he needs from his elderly lavender lady "angels", for which he trades his own dubious sexual charms, and he is totally adorable. Matthew Broderick has now lost his boyish good looks and has a touch of middle aged chubbiness, which works beautifully for Leo. And he shows himself to be a good song and dance man in spectacularly mounted numbers such as "I Wanna Be a Producer". Uma Thurman is good casting as their alluring Swedish secretary Ulla, who may be blonde with legs up to her armpits but has a sharp brain in her head and for once Will Ferrell, as the mad Nazi who writes the show, can overact to his heart's content and it works. The big "Springtime for Hitler" sequence of the show within a show is a hysterically funny treat with Gary Beach as the director and star Roger De Bris giving us the campest Hitler on record, even taking in a brief Judy Garland impression. Some people may cry homophobia at the performances of Beach and Roger Bart as his assistant Carmen Ghia, mincing around their recklessly tasteless apartment but come on chaps, this is a musical comedy and they're just very funny. So are the lavender ladies doing a tap dance with their zimmer frames.
There is for me though one disappointment. The second song in the stage show is a gloriously foot tapping old style show bizzy number called "King of Broadway", which is one of my favourites. And it's not in the film! However it's just possible it may be in the end titles, which I missed in the rush to reclaim mobile phones - these days you have to check them in at previews because of fears of piracy. So don't leave before the credits are through. I'm told they're really worth seeing. In fact I may have to go back for a second look, just to see what I missed.
Carol Allen
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of The Producers for 24th April 2006 priced at £19.99.
Features include:
- 2.40:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
- English DD5.1 Surround
- English and Hindi subtitles
- Director’s Commentary
- Deleted Scenes (19:38mins)
- Analysis of a Scene "I Want to be a Producer" (16:06mins)
- Blooper Reel (15:14mins)
|
