Reviewed
by David Spencer
My feelings about The Producers as a stage
musical are well documented in these cyber-pages, and it is by now such a
fixture that I'm going to assume most readers know the particulars of its plot,
origins, authorship, etc. For those who need more context, go to my opening week review; you'll have all the data you
require. For the rest of you: read on.
This will be a short and
bittersweet postmortem, now that the event of the movie's holiday opening
has given way to a middling box office business and a certain fast escape to
DVD shelf-life, but I have to say, I found most of the negative reviews grossly
mean and unwarranted...while I found most of the positive reviews to be
well-intentioned but also blindered by affection for the material. The bottom
line truth about the movie -- if you're being (relatively) objective and fair
-- lies right in the middle.
It has
to do with something Susan Stroman said about wanting the film to evoke early
movie musicals, specifically those of the 30s and 40s. In addition to the
shameless staginess of them -- borne of a more brazen performance style that
was friendlier to the notion of breaking into song (natural in a poetic medium
like theatre, harder to justify in a reportorial and literalizing medium like
film) -- there was also, in book scenes, what a colleague of mine refered to as
"stasis" in the camera work. Think, oh, of a Marx Brothers film. The
way you captured their antics was mostly to aim the camera and stay out of
their way. Doing that today is a little like paying conscious homage to artlessness
-- it's almost a non-style -- but on the other hand, it's a specific choice
nonetheless, and if you're hip to what Ms. Stroman's intention is through (a)
recognition or (b) having read about it (rather like depending upon a footnote
for clarity, but all right, let's give her the leeway), it's perfectly
legitimate, as far as it goes. In fact, in certain scenes (those set in Max
Bialystock's office especially) it works rather well, or can for those who
embrace the deliberate crudeness of it. By that measuring stick, about half the
movie is on the money.
The
problem is, that style, in its era, reflected the writing and sensibility of
its era. And often that style was deceptive: book-score integration was much
less sophisticated then, and it was far easier to make cuts in both to bring a
film's length down to size and tighten its pacing. For all that The
Producers
onstage is an
homage to old fashioned musical comedy, it is still a product of contemporary thinking.
It's a fairly tight piece of material to begin with. And it's also a fairly
long piece of material.
And
stage pacing is not film pacing.
That
dichotomy, more than anything else, is what I think hampers the film, when it
is hampered. It's not the staginess that's as objectionable as the staginess
wearing out its welcome scene after scene, especially in enclosed,
claustrophobic environments (Roger de Bris' town house living room suite, for
example). It isn't the close-ups of broad comedy mugging (the target of many
brickbats) so much as that the camera has little else to do but move in for a close-up. And with
the acting style necessarily big, the film traps the director in her concept.
And traps the film as well.
By
contrast, take the glorious silly movie Mouse Hunt, scripted by Adam Rifkin. For all intents and purposes, it
is a live action cartoon, and an escalating broad farce as two brothers
unintentionally destroy a valuable house in fervent and futile pursuit of a
mouse. Nathan Lane's
antics are every bit as overblown here as in The Producers; and Lee Evans (who would be Lane's Leo when The
Producers opened
in London) is just as manic an opposite as Matthew Broderick. But director Gore Verbinski always makes the camera complicit
in the storytelling, he uses a cut like a punch line. It's not that there are
too many or too few close-ups -- it's that they mean something when they
happen. And there is always atmosphere of place.
For all
that one might mount an apples and oranges rebuttal to the comparison, I don't think the
films exist in separate comedy universes -- the difference is that Mouse
Hunt has a
handle on excess, letting content dictate style...and the musical Producers doesn't, trying to impose style
upon a content that resists it.
I feel
rather similarly about Universal Studios' imposition of stars in supporting
roles: Will Ferrell is not an improvement over any of the Broadway Franzes...and
while Uma Thurman's Ulla is charming enough, and can carry a tune (if not
altogether prettily), she hasn't the genuine pizzazz of an authentic musical
theatre trouper -- and in a film whose dedicated mission is celebrating
stage-octane Broadway musical comedy styles, it seems yet another dichotomy not
to have green-lit at least that consistency.
Maybe the
musical Producers movie
will be somewhat better on DVD, on a smaller screen that's less in your face.
Not many remember this, but the original Producers movie, albeit a much better film,
suffered from a somewhat similar too-bigness, and it did only middling
box-office biz; it was its rediscovery on television, and later on home video,
that made it a world-renowned classic.
We can
but see. And hope...
**********
Conversely, and perversely, the Original Soundtrack Album on the
Columbia label (same as the original cast album) only ups the ante on one's
disappointment in the film, because the album is a rip-roaringly good one,
especially with the exuberantly played expanded orchestrations of Douglas
Besterman,
riffing on his originals and on the arrangements of "music
supervisor" Glen Kelly (who is, as the fellow who devised harmonies,
accompaniment figures and the like, to all intents and purposes, Mel Brooks's
co-composer). Reflecting the film, it omits "Where Did We Go Right?";
and Max’Äôs first number, "The King of Broadway," filmed but cut, is
featured as a bonus track. New end-title numbers, "There's Nothing Like a
Show on Broadway" and an insanely sincere-sounding pop-cover version of
"Guten Tag Hop Clop" (sung by Will Ferrell) make for an amusing coda.
Thurman and Ferrell, in their show-context tracks, pretty accurately project
the lesser-than-the-originals octane preserved on film; but if you allow points
for exuberance, they're more than tol'able. Not unheard of, the soundtrack CD
being better than the film; but this one is so conspicuously better as to
render the film heartbreaking. With only the film as evidence, I wonder if
those who never see the show will ever believe the reminiscence of those of us
who did...
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