Movie Reviews Net

Anybody truly in love with Mel Brooks’ original classic or the subsequent Broadway adaptation will be thrilled to hear that this remake more than lives up to its predecessor.

Knowing beforehand that there would be no reason to remake a brilliant, hysterical movie unless they could do it justice, the cast and crew worked together to make this adaptation even funnier than the original and that’s really saying something. I am personally such a fan of the original that I watch it several times each and every year when I am lucky enough to stumble across a showing on cable. To this day, many years after the original was made, the original still makes me laugh and the anticipation of my favorite scenes still keeps me on edge.

My initial reaction upon hearing of the remake was, well, dread. I feared that a bumbling attempt to remake what already worked would destroy the original in my eyes. I thought the money guys were in control of the creative process once again as has been the case in so many remakes through the years. But not this time, I am happy to report. This time they’ve actually improved on the original – and that’s really saying something.

The cast of Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, Will Farrell and Roger Bart as directed by Susan Stroman are so uniformly blended with their characters that the movie literally zips along flawlessly from start to finish leaving the audience almost in tears from so much laughter.

The music numbers are really to die for. If I had one complaint about the original it would be that the music numbers were given short shrift budget wise and screen time wise as they were secondary to the comic antics and desperation of the two main characters. And with their humorous take on Nazis, they were so outrageous that too much might have been considered overkill. But here, the Broadway show “Springtime For Hitler” is every bit as impressive an undertaking as it should have been in the original and it is truly hilarious. Nobody but Mel Brooks could make a humorous, sympathetic Adolf Hitler work so well. Others have tried – none have succeeded.

Ultimately, the movie turns on the chemistry between the two main characters Max Bialystock, the desperate Broadway producer, and Leo Bloom, the mild mannered, neurotic accountant who discovers that the key to financial success on Broadway is to produce a huge failure and here the chemistry works on every level. Just as in the original with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, the comic tension and timing between Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick is every bit as sharp if not more so.

This might be the very first remake that I really have no complaints about even though, as I said, the original is truly one of my all time movie favorites. This remake might actually be so fresh and funny that it could end up right next to the original on my all time favorites list. For people who have never seen the original I envy you the experience of this fresh remake. For those of you who have, like me, seen and enjoyed the original, have no fear – your time and money will be will spent watching this movie as well.

Did you like the movie as much as I did? Let me know what you thought of the movie in the comments below.