‘Producers’ film dodges disaster with sudden laughs

In theaters

THE PRODUCERS, directed by Susan Storman, written by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan, 129 minutes, rated PG-13.

Susan Storman’s “The Producers” presents a tricky balancing act for the director. It’s a film that comes with something of a pedigree – Mel Brooks’ 1968 original film, which is a comedic masterpiece, and Brooks’ over-the-top Broadway musical, which is among the biggest hits in recent Broadway memory.

Given the comparisons that were sure to follow – and the pressures that accompanied them – this new film could have been a disaster. True enough, in the early scenes, when Storman is still finding her way around the quirky rooms that fill Mel Brooks’ mind, there is every indication that it will be a disaster. Initial scenes are awkward, the meter is off, there’s a sense that the film is getting ahead of itself, the tone is wrong.

Then, without warning, the laughs start to hit, then hit harder, and then the film achieves that zenith for which it was meant – the stratosphere, where political correctness doesn’t exist and camp can run amok.

As written by Brooks and Thomas Meehan, this “Producers” is two hours of increasing lunacy, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick reprising the characters they played (and some might say the boisterous performances they gave) on Broadway and in London.

Lane is Max Bialystock, the down-on-his-luck producer who realizes that a major Broadway flop might be a way to achieve great wealth. He’s a shameless opportunist, a con who beds little old ladies in an effort to have at their retirements, which they’re more than happy to give up, but not without a sexual return on their investment.

Broderick is Leo Bloom, the jittery accountant with the security blanket at the ready whose creative number crunching is exactly what Bialystock needs to fulfill his wild new plan.

Together, they become a team, with Bialystock’s idea coming down to this: Once they secure the worst script possible, Bialystock will collect $2 million in financing from his elderly lady friends. When the musical shuts down after a crushing opening night, they will make off with the loot and enjoy their own retirements, presumably in some tropical paradise, far away from Broadway’s Great White Way.

To achieve such a feat, they seem to be on the right track – from the crazed, pro-Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind (Will Ferrell) they buy a musical called “Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolph and Eva at Berchtesgaden.” Touchy subject? You could say that. Poor taste? Oh, yes.

Unwittingly helping them to complete their dream are showbiz hopeful Ulla (Uma Thurman, towering and fantastic), who hails from Sweden and takes a shine to Leo, as well as the outrageous, mincing gay couple Roger De Bris (Gary Beach) and Carmen Ghia (Roger Bart), who take the gay stereotype to a whole new level, but not without a very broad wink at the audience.

De Bris is the show’s director, but when the actor playing Hitler literally breaks a leg on opening night, De Bris is cajoled into stepping in for him, which essentially means that this Hitler in this play is going to be played by a man whose inspiration is less Third Reich cum the Holocaust and more Judy Garland cum the Palace Theatre.

As such, what ensues can be hilarious, particularly in the song-and-dance numbers, which tap into the festering root that is Brooks’ brain and find there an absurdist’s release. There is not one subtle moment in this film – subtlety is tossed into the air and shot to the ground. The movie is pure anything-goes overkill, with Storman embracing a sensibility that is appallingly undisciplined.

You know, just as it should be.

Grade: B+

On video and DVD

SERENITY, written and directed by Joss Whedon, 119 minutes, rated PG-13.

Joss Whedon’s sci-fi powerhouse “Serenity” takes stock Asian, sci-fi and wild Western elements and twists them into an intergalactic space adventure that somehow escaped being tweaked to serve the masses. It’s for hardcore sci-fi fans, and as such it likely will become an underground hit, particularly now that it’s available on DVD.

Those drawn to it will find humor, pathos, drama, wit, action and fear roiling in the caldron of Whedon’s imagination. Here is a writer-director who is so confident in his craft that he’s able to toy with the pop-culture references without slavishly adhering to the formula that normally drives them.

From Whedon’s script, “Serenity” is based on the director’s excellent yet ill-fated 2002 Fox television show “Firefly.” Set 500 years in the future, the film follows Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), brawny captain of the junk space ship Serenity, whose crew is a melting pot of capable misfits facing a civil war that involves a band of zombie cannibals, scientific experiments gone awry and the Alliance, which naturally wants control of the universe.

What you admire in “Serenity” is Whedon’s nerve – one false move, and this deceptively fragile film, with its deceptively sturdy facade, could have collapsed if just the right tone wasn’t struck. And yet it is struck. Whedon’s ability to shift between elements of horror and humor is exactly what he did so well in the television series he created, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Grade: A-

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.