The Producers

When I first saw the original movie of The Producers, I fell in love with it. I absolutely adored its subtleties. I also loved the songs and the way that Mel Brooks seemed to have a near perfect balance between humour and music. I’ve heard some of the songs from the stage show version of The Producers which was based on the original film and I loved the new songs. So, when I heard that Hollywood were making a movie of the play which was of a movie which was about a play (Confused yet?) I was very pleased.

I went to see the new movie of The Producers. I wasn’t so pleased.

The main problem that I had with the new film is that it’s not sure what time period it’s set in. The original movie was set in the mid 1960s, when it was made. It was the story of two very stereotypically Jewish characters who, after discovering that they can make more money by producing a flop rather than a hit, decide to make the worst play ever written, a play that shows Hitler in a sympathetic light, written by a man who was and is still a member of the Nazi party. Because the original story is set like this the tension between the characters is at an all time high and never looks like sagging.

That’s the original film in a nutshell.

The new film is supposedly still set in the mid 1960s however little things are done to try and modernise the scenarios to convey to a 2006 audience. Such as having animatronics pigeons that can perform Nazi salutes and calling Franz (the Nazi writer) a, “Neo – Nazi”.

The film was still funny in places, the audience in the cinema where I was, seemed to enjoy the film quite a lot. However I didn’t.

A major problem that I had with this new version of the film was the direction, Susan Stroman may be a very successful choreographer, however, she’s clearly not a film director. Essentially, she filmed a theatre show on a film set, which is a problem as films and plays are performed in very different ways. In plays the characters sometimes need to over state the joke or the action in order to convey what’s just happened to the audience, they also need to leave time for the laughter/ applause to settle. In a film, actions don’t need to be overstated, as the camera picks up on everything that it sees. The end result in the movie were gaps where the actors waited for their queues which in return slowed the film down and took away nearly all of the tension that made the original film so great.

My recommendation is that if you want to see The Producers, you see the original. As it is far superior in every single way.