What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

I know people love him and think he's a genius, but I do not think Brooks ages well. I don't think Woody Allen (sex creep etc aside) ages well either, but that definitely puts me in the super minority.

fightcitymayor wrote:

Legomancer wrote: 4. Young Frankenstein (1974, Brooks)

I'll say it... overrated. I predict you'll be shocked at how bored you are while watching it.

You're dead to me now.

ChristopherMD wrote:

fightcitymayor wrote:

Legomancer wrote: 4. Young Frankenstein (1974, Brooks)

I'll say it... overrated. I predict you'll be shocked at how bored you are while watching it.

You're dead to me now.

... which is exactly what I was thinking when Lego said Blazing Saddles was a "yawner."
So I guess now each of us has someone we're no longer on speaking terms with.

jason10mm wrote: Gray Man was fun but coming off of The Terminal List with its amazing attention to detail this film seems almost comical by comparison. Still, it is beautifully shot and watching Ana and Jessica play off Ryan and Chris respectively is pretty great. It's a shame Gosling didnt bother to get into shape for this though....

My daughter was asking me, "Is it a comedy?" Eh, sort of? "Is Chris Evans hot in it?" He has a moustache that isn't doing him any favors.

Young Frankenstein might not be a good fim, but it has the fork scene. My life is better because I saw that.

RobertB wrote:

jason10mm wrote: Gray Man was fun but coming off of The Terminal List with its amazing attention to detail this film seems almost comical by comparison. Still, it is beautifully shot and watching Ana and Jessica play off Ryan and Chris respectively is pretty great. It's a shame Gosling didnt bother to get into shape for this though....

My daughter was asking me, "Is it a comedy?" Eh, sort of? "Is Chris Evans hot in it?" He has a moustache that isn't doing him any favors.

Why did the Russo Brothers give Captain America a Stalin makeover?

Young Frankenstein is one of my favorites and I think it is great.

Recently, UP (2009). A sweet and funny movie. Unusual protagonists (cranky old man, chunky Asian kid), a plot that genuinely kept me guessing, and boy, the silent montage of the first ten minutes.

I am not a Brooks fan, don't find him funny at all, and recently watched Young Frankenstein for the first time. It was better than the others, as I did laugh a couple of times, but not outrageously funny.

dysjunct wrote: Recently, UP (2009). A sweet and funny movie. Unusual protagonists (cranky old man, chunky Asian kid), a plot that genuinely kept me guessing, and boy, the silent montage of the first ten minutes.

I was reading a ranked and notated list of Studio Ghibli movies, and somehow that got me thinking about Up. Excellent movie, especially the opening sequence.

Young Frankenstein is excellent. There's almost no funnier scene in movie comedy than Gene Hackman as the blind man. Cloris Leachman and Marty Feldman pull off perfect renditions of two completely different styles of comedy in the same film, while Gene Wilder plays the perfect straight man, both setting up and taking the hit. But comedy is one of the most difficult genres to find agreement on, as everyone's sense of humor is different. I think there's greater appeal if you've spent some time with the classic horror films that YF is spoofing, but it's certainly true that, like most comedians, Mel Brooks' approach is not for everyone.

For me, Blazing Saddles is one of the funniest movies ever made. Young Frankenstein is a little bit behind it. There's a big dropoff to Spaceballs, and a big dropoff from there to everything else Mel Brooks has done.

I saw Spaceballs and was just bored. On HBO as a kid I saw bits of others but nothing that grabbed me. A couple years ago I watched Blazing Saddles and barely chuckled. I don't know, I generally love comedies and have laughed at stuff both high and low brow but nothing in Blazing Saddles did anything for me.

I put Young Frankenstein on the list of contenders because it's supposed to be the absolute best and I thought I'd give it a shot. We'll see. I'm not expecting much.

I remember watching History of the world part 1 as a kid and thinking it was the funniest thing ever. Of course, saying shit still had shock value then.

There's no argument that Brooks did not aim particularly high or in daring ways for a number of his films. The first third or so of Spaceballs is funny (I had a friend who bet $20 that he wouldn't laugh through the whole film because he supposedly didn't like Brooks; he made it to "Pizza the Hutt.") The rest of is is somewhere between passable and a chore. History of the World is like that. There are some good moments and some still-funny-but-lowbrow moments:

"Give to Oedipus... Give to Oedipus... Hey, Josephus!"
"Hey, muthafucker!"

But I think The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and High Anxiety are all genuinely good-to-great films that had a lot more going on than simply his sometimes opaque sense of humor.

Come on, why you guys sleeping on Men in Tights?

I actually met Mel Brooks once in the late 90's, was a nice enough guy.