Blazing Saddles (1974)

Director: Mel Brooks

Cast: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn

Have I Seen It Before: Yes? I’m pretty sure I have. I never liked it as much as Young Frankenstein (1974). Westerns were never central to me, and it always seemed like my father liked it a bit too much, if you know what I mean. That hardly covers the times when other family members would try to parenthetically try to quote the film and ruin Johnny Carino’s for everyone.

Maybe I only saw it on cable…

Did I Like It: The prospect of watching the movie with an audience in the year of our Lord 2024 presents are certain amount of dread, and yet I serve at the altar of the cinema. Indeed, the crowd was at least somewhat made up of people who bemoan that such a movie could never be made today, like an infant who wants to watch cartoons right now.

They all laughed a little too loud at the wrong spots—again, if you catch my meaning—but the mythology around the film makes it seem like those people are the ones who really appreciate the film, but the truth is that the film is making fun of them—nay, mocking them mercilessly—and they don’t know any better. The comedy isn’t in the idea of a black sheriff (Little, a paragon of perfectly calibrated charisma) coming to defend the town, it’s in the townspeople who would rather be terrorized by the goons at the employ of Hedley Lamar (Harvey Korman) than have a sheriff. Bart is—sometimes literally; I’m not sure what movie the rest of you are watching—Bugs Bunny, harnessing chaos from rubes to semi-heroic ends.

Speaking of chaos and the essential Bugs-ness of the proceedings… The final minutes of the film are undeniably the most enjoyable section of the film is when things completely fall apart and the movie is a real problem for the safety and security of the Warner Bros. lot. You can say a lot about Warners, but there really aren’t any studios that are willing to let filmmakers mock them while on their dime. The few that do experiment in the idea are just mimicking the shield.

History of the World, Part I (1981)

Director: Mel Brooks

Cast: Mel Brooks, Gregory Hines, Madeline Kahn, Orson Welles

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I usually feel the compulsion to add a few disclaimers as I launch in to any review of a Mel Brooks movie. I’m going to be hard pressed to say he’s got a better movie than Young Frankenstein (1974), and try as I might I’ll never quite care for Spaceballs (1987) if for no other reason than I never really believe that Brooks himself has any interest in making the movie.

Additionally, I can’t help but qualify what is to come and say that I’m almost always convinced that a sketch comedy film can’t help but broadcast to it s viewer that not one single idea contained within is funny enough to support a movie of its own.

So, it’s a bit of a surprise to me that on this viewing, History kind of works. Sure, there are a more than a few dated stabs at humor that ring not only as unfunny, but hateful, but there are also more than few laughs that still work.

Madeline Kahn may be tragically underused in the proceedings, but les we forget that any movie featuring Kahn should probably get a positive review. Without her, Clue (1985) would be a vaguely embarrassing amalgamation of an otherwise engaging cast.

And we’ve got Orson Welles offering narration? Maybe this all can’t overcome the limits of a feature-length series of sketches. Even Monty Python were bringing material from their television work when they worked with the genre, and Meaning of Life has some kind of loose structure keeping things as one idea worth more of our time. Maybe it all feels like Brooks is vaguely embarrassed by each idea, but never quite enough to actually abandon them. But if we’ve got Welles’ voice as our constant throughout the scrambling, it’s safe to say this is probably the classiest examples of the genre.

Clue (1985)

Director: Jonathan Lynn

Cast: Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd

Have I Seen it Before: Yes…

Did I Like It: How do you broach the subject of writing about a nearly universally loved film, when you don’t like it even a little bit?

Don’t go, don’t go. We can talk about it, right? 

I like the cast. Some of them have appeared in some of my very favorite films of all time. Christopher Lloyd, who I adore, sleepwalks through the film, in sharp contrast to Tim Curry who is probably too frantic here for his own good. The late, great Madeline Kahn can’t help but shine, with her “flames” speech being my biggest laugh during the film.

Yes, I didn’t laugh much during the film, and if you’re not laughing while watching a comedy, that’s pretty much the beginning and end of it. There’s some wordplay, which I’m always in favor of, but the dialogue is spit out with an almost sleepy indifference (Kahn notwithstanding). 

But the problems for me go deeper than the fact that I didn’t think the film is all that funny, and it goes to the core gimmick that has cemented the film in most peoples memories, the multiple endings. While it would have been an intriguing prospect to see the film multiple times and having a different experience in the theater, but after it moves into home media, we are subjected to all three endings in quick succession*, which makes the true messiness at the core of the movie hard to ignore. How can a mystery work if it truly, deeply, doesn’t matter who was the murderer/murderers? Communism may be a red herring, but in this Schrödinger’s mystery, everything is a red herring. Hardly seems worth it.

Also, what the hell does Cluedo mean? Why do people call it that outside of the country?

* DVDs and Blu-Rays give the viewer the option to view only one ending at random, but that hardly seems like the same thing.