Producers, The (2005)

Initially it is difficult not to compare this filmed version of the smash Broadway musical based on the 1968 Mel Brooks’ movie that was its source and find it wanting.

It is true that it lacks the incomparable combination of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder as two producers, Max Bialystock and Leopold Bloom, who set out to make a fortune by putting on a sure-fire flop but with a script reworked by Brooks with Thomas Mehan and a clutch of amusing songs by the former which together add forty minutes to the run-time it largely remedies the short-comings of the original, notably its lack of a properly fleshed-out story. The result is, as Brooks would say, surprisingly good, although it was given a generally luke-warm critical reception when initially released.

One of the shortcomings of the original film was that although it was about the production of a musical, very little was seen of that with only one production number of note. This lack has been admirably corrected here.  With the director of the stage production, Susan Stroman, at the helm and a high quality production team, with gorgeous costumes, sets and lighting design recalling the hey-day of MGM musicals of the 1940s viewers get a sense of what the theatre audience would have experienced (in this respect the film’s few exteriors are a let-down). The film struggles with its revised ending,however, the extrapolation of Leo's adventures with Ulla, the court-room scene and the staging of the prison number over-extending what otherwise is a most entertaining film. 

Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the roles they had in the Broadway version both base their performances on the original. In the case of Lane, who can always be relied upon for a winning performance, this works well. Broderick, however, who at the best of times is the epitome of white collar blandness, was an odd choice to take the Gene Wilder part. Nevertheless, once he drops the Wilder imitation (including the bug eyes!) he is serviceable. Equally, Will Ferrell is no match for Kenneth Mars, but Gary Beach and Roger Bart are amusing as the world’s worst director and his gay lover and Uma Thurman makes a striking appearance as Ulla, a part much improved from the original film.

Probably few people would choose this over the original but it is the more polished of the two and so for my money they come out more or less equal. 

 

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