Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” began as a movie, became a musical, and has now turned back into a movie. The 1968 original, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, is now regarded as one of the best film comedies ever. On Broadway, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, it splashed into the history books with the most Tony Awards ever lauded on one production. This third version can’t muffle the laughs Mel Brooks’ and Thomas Meehan’s script still generates, though at times it seems as if it is trying.

In case you haven’t seen either of the previous versions, the story is about Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Lane), his hapless, nervy accountant Leo Bloom (Broderick), and their scheme to con rich old ladies as backers—to pony up a grand total of $2 million for a play that is so vulgar that it will only last one night. “Springtime for Hitler” is the script, penned by Franz Liebkind (Will Ferrel), a neo-Nazi who laments the Fuehrer’s historical record (“People don’t realize that Hitler was a really good dancer,” he notes.) The worst director in town, Roger De Bris (Gary Beach) is hired, together with his fawning companion Carmen Ghia (Roger Bart). The female lead is taken by a woman in her 20s, Ulla (Uma Thurman) with a long, long Swedish name who tells the partners at an audition that she favors having sex each morning at 11. Instead of being run off Broadway, clutching their millions, Bialystock and Bloom find themselves hailed as supreme satirists and Kings of Broadway.

Quite obviously the main reason for making a big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical—apart from money—was to record for posterity the award-winning performances of Lane and Broderick. Though sub Zero Mostel, Lane succeeds in making Bialystock his own—manic, cunning and pompously feigning the airs and graces of a great Broadway producer while wearing a cardboard belt. His delivery of the still very funny Brooks/Meehan script is spot on. His eyebrows constantly cocked at a 45-degree angle, Lane is able to pull off gag after gag with a melodramatic utterance or even a simple whimsical glance to the camera.

Broderick, however, seems at sea, clutching scraps of Gene Wilder the same way his character clutches his blanket, screaming and twitching his way through punch lines, too often falling flat. While his caricature of paranoid tics and stuttering tremulations have clearly clicked with audiences and critics on the stage, on screen it comes off like an inferior cover version, a mimicking of Wilder with only partial success, leaving the viewer nostalgic for the original and slightly irritated by the successor’s presence. Ferrell is disappointing, too, as Franz Liebkind, spitting and shouting every line, bulldozing through every scene like German storm troopers through French infantry lines. Again, it’s a performance that leaves one hungry for the original with Kenneth Mars’ hilarious turn as the goose-stepping playwright.

Not that the film isn’t without other impressive performances. Gary Beach and Roger Bart are a hoot as director Roger De Bris and Carmen Ghia. The former hams it up spectacularly during the eventual performance of “Springtime for Hitler,” the film’s funniest moment, while Bart makes good use of the increased screen time his character gets in this remake. Indeed, “The Producers (2005),” is still capable of raising more than the odd guffaw. However, it’s hampered by its immense theatrical bulk and often descends into a ham-fisted farce that blungeons rather than tickles its audience with jokes. Songs such as “Springtime for Hitler,” “Haben Sie Gehört das Deutsche Band?” and “Prisoners of Love” are done with flair and humor, but other numbers are forgettable, drawn out affairs that too often don’t advance the plot and, because of the medium, are not bolstered by instant audience applause as they would be onstage. 

This poses the film’s greatest problem. As a film version of a Broadway musical, it’s too literal. Director Susan Stroman, who directed the Broadway version, doesn’t seem to realize that she’s making a film, not just an almost word-for-word, step-for-step rehash of the stage version. The point of theater is that it is transient, it changes every night. If you missed Olivier’s “Hamlet” or Brando’s “Streetcar” or Welles’ “MacBeth,” then tough luck. Why not just have Lane and Co. perform as usual onstage and stick a few cameras around the house, arbitrarily flicking between them every few minutes?

“The Producers” is a funny film, with some very funny parts. It just all seems so unnecessary, inferior both to its cinematic and theatrical predecessors. Rumor has it that Brooks is planning a musical version of “Young Frankenstein.” I hope it’s better than this. Brooks seems to be living by Max Bialystock’s mantra, “When you’ve got it baby, flaunt it! Flaunt it!”

directed by: Susan Stroman
written by: Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan, with music and lyrics by Brooks
starring: Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, Will Ferrell and Roger Bart
rated PG-13 for sexual humor and references