I almost mentioned ‘Blazing Saddles’ yesterday as a movie that doesn’t hold up. I saw it probably 10 times when it was first released in 1974, and then I saw it last year and — bleeeeecccchhhhh! I’d say the same of all Brooks movies now except for “The Producers,” and even “The Producers” isn’t half as good as the Broadway musical Brooks made of it a few years ago. He can’t direct, he slams you over the head with every joke, and he acts as though everybody in the audience is, well, a 13 year-old moron like I was in 1974. His movies only soar in the musical numbers, like the Frankenstein-Monster duet to “Young Frankenstein” and his own Sinatra parody with the title theme to “High Anxiety.” And, of course, “Springtime for Hitler,” the great sequence from “The Producers.”
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John Podhoretz is the editor of Commentary.
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