Rating: C+
Dir: Mel Brooks.
Star: Mel Brooks, Gregory Hines, Harvey Korman, Dom DeLuise.
After the more focused parodies of his previous movies, Brooks went full shotgun here, covering different eras in human civilization, from prehistoric times up to the French Revolution. It took 42 years for Part 2 to show up, as a Hulu miniseries. I lasted precisely one episode of that, and it was a struggle. The original seems like Brooks was trying to emulate Monty Python. The whole Roman Empire section (which was a lot longer than I remembered) is clearly influenced by Life of Brian, and I trust I needn’t draw you a picture in respect to the Spanish Inquisition. Though getting Orson Welles act as narrator is certainly a coup, giving the project gravitas it then rejects entirely.
I honestly don’t remember much about the Prehistoric segment. Considering I finished watching the movie less than an hour ago, this is probably not a good sign. On the other hand, I remember far too much about the Roman Empire section. It feels like Brooks wanted to use as the basis for a whole movie, if only the Pythons hadn’t got there first. I did laugh at stand-up philosopher Comicus (Brooks) getting a gig at Caesar’s palace, only to pull up at the Vegas casino. It’s interesting to see Hines in his feature debut (a late replacement for Richard Pryor), and Madeline Kahn’s Empress Nympho is appropriately named. But a lot of the comedic impact here has been flattened by time. Or maybe it wasn’t that funny to begin with.
Things improve with the Spanish Inquisition section – I didn’t expect that, hohoho. It’s largely a glorious, escalating song and dance number (top), with nuns ripping off their habits and plunging, Esther Williams style, into a pool which has risen out of the floor. But we also get the best pun in the whole Brooks universe. “Torquemada – do not ask him for forgiveness. Let’s face it, you can’t Torquemada anything!” We then move onto the French Revolution, which is most notable for a parade of British cameos, including Spike Milligan, Andrew Sachs, Nigel Hawthorne and Fiona Richmond. There should have been John Cleese as well, but scheduling prevented him from playing Count de Monet, so Korman took over instead.
It has been a while since I’d seen this, and in my mind, it was a greater selection of shorter skits. Turns out I was remembering the final part, which teases a part two, with segments like Hitler on Ice [I would have paid good money to see someone at the recent Winter Olympics come out dressed as Der Fuhrer. Bonus points if it was the German competitor]. In hindsight, Jews in Space feels like it was foreshadowing what was to come in six years, but we’ll get to that. For now this is, literally, all over the space-time continuum, both in terms of topic and effectiveness. To extend the Python comparison, it’s closer in quality to a grab-bag of episodes than any of their movies.