Susan Granger’s review of “The Producers” (Universal Pictures)
There’s good news and bad news. The good news is: if you’ve never seen Mel Brooks’ Tony Award-winning musical, here it is. The bad news is: it’s staged like stale Broadway theater.
There’s Nathan Lane as unscrupulous theatrical producer Max Bialystock with Matthew Broderick as his uptight but creative accountant Leo Bloom and Uma Thurman as their saucy Swedish secretary. They concoct a scheme to raise money to finance the worst show in history so when it flops, they can pocket the cash. “Springtime For Hitler,” a dismal homage to Adolf by neo-Nazi fanatic Franz Liebkind (Will Ferrell), fits the bill, particularly as staged by cross-dressing director Roger de Bris (Gary Beach) and his “assistant” (Roger Bart, the creepy pharmacist on TV’s “Desperate Housewives”). But much to their surprise and chagrin, it’s a hit!
While stage director Susan Stroman re-invents a few numbers, she fails to utilizes film as a medium. Instead of toning their performances down for the intimacy of the camera, she has her over-rehearsed actors ooze artificial theatricality, a clumsy, heavy-handed device that makes the flamboyant physical shtick often fall flat. It’s a shame that Mel Brooks didn’t direct it himself or find an experienced movie director who was up to the transformative task. Nevertheless, “The Producers” is a phenomenon which won a Best Screenplay Oscar for Brooks back in 1968, when it starred Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, before it evolved into a musical and now a movie. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Producers” is an unsettling 6 that seems to have gone awry somewhere between the stage and the screen. Significantly, the only new musical number is the finale, “There’s Nothing Like a Show on Broadway,” and there’s a surprise at the end credits.
