I've never seen Blazing Saddles. I've never really considered Mel Brooks to be scraping the outer borders of moderately amusing let alone a comedic genius.

Just watched about 40 minutes of Blazing Saddles on AMC. I know it was edited but I just really don't get whatever it is that makes so many people love it or Mel Brooks in general. He's just so broad and obvious and schticky.

And yet Gene Wilder is a genius. A genius who made so many really bad movies.

I <3 Alex.

Perhaps that's why Young Frankenstein really stands out among the Mel Brooks ouvre, since it was co-written with Gene Wilder, the genius who made 3 good movies and a lot of bad ones.

Unlike Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon and Woody Allen, Mel Brooks never really stopped writing for Sid Caesar. That said, while I don't adore "Blazing Saddles" as some do, Brooks's shtick is something I've decided I want to laugh at, so I generally do.

It's not required, but it probably helps to be Jewish to appreciate Brooks.

I don't know if I personally consider him a comedy genius or not. Taken on the whole, not so much, he's made many a stinker and the bulk of the humor ends up in the juvenile/recycled borscht belt buckets. But The Producers alone certainly qualifies him to be considered for genius status, then you add in the parts of Spaceballs and Blazing Saddles and History of the World that are more than fart, dick, and sex jokes and yeah I begin to concede. Of course, all I have to do is think of Robin Hood, Men in Tights to fall back on the "not a genius" side of the debate.

Come on. "Men in Tights" was worth it for "I have a mole?"

Certainly not in the genius category, and uneven to be sure, but I find his homage films High Anxiety and Silent Movie above his unfortunate average.





Oh and Ghoulish Johnson is right .... it helps if you're Jewish.

That's been the case throughout history.

Not so much during The Inquisition .... or perhaps the Holocaust, but most other times it's been really cool and somewhat chic.

Interesting to me that a discussion about Three Amigos, a movie directed by John Landis and starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short, (looked this up - written by Martin, Lorne Michaels and Randy Newman) suddenly shifts to a discussion about Mel Brooks. I don't think the humor is the same at all. Talk about a goyisha film. ;)

Not everything that NA doesn't like (or rather, hasn't seen) falls into the same box. I think this is one that she might actually like, in part since the jokes haven't been repeated a billion times like Brooks or Python.