Silent Movie

clownhead4.5

when the board of old white men started praying to a gigantic neon dollar sign ... I love realism

Matt Singer4.0

The only Mel Brooks movie I’d never seen is ... pretty consistently hilarious? It’s also a blank check movie if I ever saw one; Mel Brooks used his clout from releasing two of the biggest comedies ever in a single year to make Hollywood’s first silent movie in decades — and to get some of the biggest stars of the era to make cameos, thus ensuring the movie had sufficient box office appeal to draw audiences despite its anachronistic aesthetics. (That’s also, by no coincidence, the plot of Silent Movie, with Brooks as a desperate director trying to lure A-listers into his new project, a silent movie.)A few of the gags have aged in unflattering ways, the rest still kill. I could have watched a whole movie of the scene in James Caan’s trailer and I could have watched an entire trilogy about Brooks, Feldman, and DeLuise in suits of armor.

David Whitman3.5

A washed up film director (Mel Brooks) and his two idiot sidekicks (Dom DeLuise & Marty Feldman) try to get a silent film made in the 1970’s. They just need to line up enough big stars to get it made.This is a very curious parody of silent films. The spirits of Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd can be felt in every minute. I doubt many people were clamoring for a silent film 40 years after the industry had moved on to “talkies”.Like many spoofs of the time, the goal was to throw as many gags at the audience as possible. Many fail and some work. This isn’t a hilarious film—I found it to be funny in a cerebral way and I think I laughed out loud once (thank you, Burt Reynolds). I’m huge silent film buff, so the whole concept of this film was intriguing. I’m more prone to like something like this. I thought this movie was completely charming and I was never bored. Yet, most of the humor will probably provoke a minor chuckle at best.The actors are all completely entertaining. This is Mel Brooks first lead in a film and he fits in perfectly to this mad world. Marty Feldman has a face that is literally made for a film like this and I enjoyed his antics with Brooks.Most of the time it was Dom DeLouise who had me smiling. He gives this film an extra flair and energy. This marks his first pairing with Burt Reynolds.Other big stars of the 70’s that show up are Paul Newman, Liza Minelli, James Caan and Bernadette Peters. I especially found Caan to be pretty amusing—he parodies his Godfather tough guy persona.I was completely entertained. It clocks in at a brief 87 minutes. Some of you out there might not be able to handle a film that literally has one line of dialogue (from a French mime). It helps if you’re a fan of silent films. It’s certainly no Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles, but even in the modern world, there a few movies that come close to their shine.