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Producers (The)
R1 - America - Universal Pictures Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak and Roger Nicholl (19th June 2006). |
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The Film
 The movie version of The Producers is the third version of Mel Brooks‘ story. It was first a non-musical film made in 1968, which won Brooks an Oscar for ‘Best Original Screenplay’. As a Broadway musical it won a record 12 Tony Awards in 2001. The film version was nominated for 4 Golden Globes, which means that now is the time to stop as that’s about as far down the award food chain as you’d want to drop. Susan Stroman, the original Broadway director of the musical version, directs here, and does a good job of capturing the spirit of the stage production while making it look like a movie (note: I have seen a West End production). The Producers is about Broadway-impresario Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) whose latest show, 'Funny Boy' - a musical of Hamlet, just opened and closed on the same night. When nebbish accountant Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick) comes to his office the next day to do the books he notes offhand that a producer could, under the right conditions, make more money from a flop than a hit. Max, being an unscrupulous Broadway-producer skilled at putting on flops seizes on this comment, and tries to convince Leo to be his partner and help him both make the worst show in history and get stinking rich. The first half hour of the film is about honest, timid, Leo being convinced to go along with Max’s scheme. And unfortunately this part of the film drags. Leo’s too scared to team with Max, he changes his mind, he leaves, and he comes back. It’s a frustrating start to the film, and the only part that had the feel of a filmed stage play. But once Leo decides to go along with Max, the pace picks up and the film gets very entertaining. To put together the worst show ever they have to find the worst script and hire the worst director. The worst script they can find is for a musical called 'Springtime for Hitler’ written by an over-the-top Nazi sympathizer, Franz Liebkind (Will Ferrell). The title of worst director belongs to Roger DeBris (Gary Beach) who brings with him a production team that consists of almost every comedically-stereotypical gay character possible. The comedy style of The Producers comedy makes characters that could either seem dated or offensive quite charming. The tone is just right for the material; the film is too silly to come across as mean-spirited thanks to the artificiality of the musical genre and the over-the-top vaudevillian style of performances. If you’re interested in comedy as a writer, I’d recommend seeing this, as I can’t think of another recent movie with this style of humor. The songs, also written by Brooks, are pretty good. They’re not Cole Porter-standard, but they’re good musical comedy songs. If you stay watching through the credits you’ll get two more of them. The first is Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick singing about all the drawbacks of going to see Broadway shows. The second is Will Ferrell singing a version of 'Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop' in the lush style you hear at the end of Disney cartoons. Sit through those and Mel Brooks pops up to tell you to leave because the show’s over, which makes sense in a movie theatre, but I don’t know why he wants me to leave my living room so badly. The Producers is a fun comedy/musical, and fun comedy/musicals movies come out maybe once in every five or ten years. It has a style of humor which isn’t used much today. So it’s a double rarity. Just stick with it past the slow first thirty minutes.
Video
Presented in the film’s original theatrical ratio of 2.40:1, this anamorphic transfer is very good, the image is somewhat soft, as sharpness is not consistent throughout, colors are well rendered especially skin tones, the blacks are deep and bold, shadow detail is consistent, and there was no edge-enhancement, compression artefacts or any print damage of any kind. Aside from the sharpness issue there wasn’t much I could find wrong with this transfer.
Audio
Two audio tracks are included, an English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track. I chose to view the film with its English soundtrack for the purposes of this review and found it to be adequate. I found that the majority of the sound seemed directed at the front speakers, the rear speakers kicked in occasionally during the musical numbers. This really hurt the overall depth of the track as I never felt totally immersed. Aside from that I found the track had no major distortion issues and was relatively clear. Optional subtitles are included in English for the hearing impaired, French and Spanish.
Extras
First up we have a feature-length audio commentary with the film’s director Susan Stroman. And in an annoying introduction to the track, she recites the original pitch for the film in song form. Stroman uses this track to fire away facts like a computer and often feels like she’s reading it off the page. While generally interesting, her style is boring and feels too much like a history lesson than a commentary. She discusses differences between the stage version and the film, as well as the sets, which are a particular talking point as well as the songs among other things. Not my type of track to listen to, however fans of the musical may get more out of this than I did. Next up are a series of 8 deleted scenes that cane be viewed individually or with a ‘play all’ function. These scenes do not include any commentary or explanation why they were cut other than the assumption that they were trimmed for pacing or runtime reasons. The scenes included are: - "King Of Broadway" which runs for 5 minutes 24 seconds and sees an extended musical sequence that would have taken place after the first number where Bialystock’s opens and closes on the same night. - "Hide and Seek" runs for 58 minutes and is an extended scene where Bialystock plays hide and seek with Hold Me-Touch Me (Eileen Essell). - "I Wanna Be A Producer" runs for 50 seconds and includes a different beginning to that musical number. - "In Old Bavaria" runs for 1 minute 18 seconds, and sees Franz Liebkind sing about why he misses Bavaria. - "Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop (Reprise)" runs for 38 seconds, after Bloom and Bialystock leave Franz’s rooftop, he expresses his happiness in getting his play made. - "Along Came Baily (with vignettes)" runs for 6 minutes 38 seconds. This scene is Bialystock’s musical number about getting money from his elderly investors. - "That Face (Reprise)" runs for 2 minutes 4 seconds, Bloom and Bialystock sing about Ulla’s beautiful face. - "Astor Bar" runs for 1 minute 44 seconds, Bloom and Bialystock drink to the failure of Springtime for Hitler. Following that is a collection of outtakes which runs for 15 minutes 14 seconds, these are a series of line flubs, goofs, missed cues, and other mistakes cut together in a reel. Some of these are quite funny, while others not so much. The featurette on this disc is entitled "Analysis Of A Scene: 'I Wanna Be A Producer'" and runs for 16 minutes 6 seconds. This piece takes a look at the creation of that musical number from the rehearsal process, the choreography of the dance, shooting the rehearsal to create a visual storyboard to plan the shoot. Other aspects also include the set design, costumes, lighting and camera techniques are all covered. Rather than giving us a brief making-of Universal has shown us the technicalities involved in putting together one of the key scenes in this film and covers all major departments. It’s short but one of the best extras on this disc. Rounding out the extras are some start-up trailers (which play before the main menu, can be skipped by pressing the ‘menu’ button on your remote and cannot be accessed from the menu): - "Munich" which runs for 38 seconds. - Focus Features promo spot which runs for 1 minute 37 seconds. - NBC Comedy Thursdays promo spot which runs for 30 seconds. - "The Producers Soundtrack" promo spot which runs for 32 seconds. - "Over the Hedge" which runs for 2 minutes 3 seconds.
Overall
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