7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.8 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Producers Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom make money by producing a sure-fire flop.
Starring: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn, Kenneth Mars, Andréas VoutsinasComedy | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Though it wasn't always so (more about that a bit later), The Producers is now regularly listed among the funniest films of the 20th century and is equally consistently placed atop lists of the best Mel Brooks films, so it should come as no great surprise that I'm about to repeat those accolades. And as much as any review is intrinsically a subjective opinion, in this case it may be more subjective than usual due to the fact that I have several tangential connections to The Producers that probably make me a less than objective analyst of the film. The most salient of these is that in my guise as a professional musician I conducted a smash hit mounting of the musical version of The Producers a couple of years ago, a production that received rave reviews and set box office records that shattered the half century history of attendance at the theater where it was mounted. Also in my guise as a musician, it has been both my pleasure and privilege to work with the insanely talented daughter of The Producers’ resident crazy Nazi author, Kenneth Mars, the impeccably gifted Susannah Mars, and through her auspices I was able to chat with Mr. Mars about his work on this film (as well as other Brooks outings). Finally, though this is perhaps stretching things a bit, my late uncles owned quite a bit of real estate in and around Manhattan for decades in the mid-20th century, and rented to a laundry list of well known celebrities through the years. Two of these were Mel Brooks and Dustin Hoffman, and indeed when the special edition DVD of The Producers came out replete with a remembrance by Brooks of Hoffman throwing pebbles on Brooks’ apartment window on West 11th in order to reveal he might have just been cast in The Graduate and therefore couldn’t do The Producers, that was a building that my family owned. Brooks' anecdote just leapt right out at me when I first listened to it, as one of my Uncles used to regale me with stories of a young, and largely unemployed, Dustin Hoffman when I would visit him in New York City in that very building (where he also had an apartment). And so I’m probably the last person to ask for an “objective” view of this unabashedly ridiculous romp, for I’ve loved it since I first saw it on television as a child, and it has continued to delight me in the (many) intervening years. Anyone who has worked in the world of theater and dealt with the often smarmy machinations of producers will tell you that Brooks’ film is obviously exaggerated but is not that far off the mark in terms of the lengths some will go to make a buck.
The Producers is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Shout!'s press materials accompanying this release state that this was sourced from a new HD master, and the results are often spectacular. The elements are in fantastic condition, and no aggressive digital tweaking seems to have been done to them (if these were scrubbed of damage, it's been done very well indeed, with no loss of detail that I could discern.) Colors have a whole new life to them (Estelle Winwood's dress is blue, baby!), and fine detail really pops, especially since Brooks loves to shoot both Mostel and Wilder, as well as several supporting players, in extreme close-ups a lot of the time. There are a few niggling anomalies, however, including some very minor density fluctuations that give the appearance of negligible flicker now and again. Also a couple of scenes which have always looked soft continue to, including the romp around Lincoln Center. I don't think I've ever noticed this before, and I'm still not entirely positive, but it seems like the film utilizes rear projections when Bialystock and Bloom get out of the car to arrive at DeBris' apartment.
The Producers features its original mono track via an uncompressed LPCM Mono (2.0) mix, as well as a lossless rendering of the repurposed (Dolby Digital) 5.1 soundtrack done for the Special Edition DVD, now delivered via DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. Purists will no doubt want to stick with the original mono track, which is quite spry and delivers dialogue, music and effects quite effectively. I have a somewhat ambivalent reaction to the 5.1 mix. It's a bit more aggressive than I typically like in situations like this, with foley effects deliberately panned to achieve a faux surround ambience (you'll note this especially in some of the outdoor Manhattan sequences). On the other hand, the incredible music, courtesy of John Morris and Brooks himself, sounds fantastic in the surround mix. One way or the other, it's nice to have a choice, and kudos to Shout! for providing fans with one.
Only the misnamed "Soundtrack Spot" (which any Broadway musical lover will tell you should have been called an "Original Cast Recording Spot") has not been ported over from the Special Edition DVD:
- The Producers (480p; 2:12)
- American Masters' Mel Brooks: Make a Noise (1080i; 1:51)
- The Incredible Mel Brooks: An Irresistible Collection of Unhinged Comedy (480i; 2:30)
I was in pre-production for The Producers for a rather incredible year before the show even opened for what was a pretty long (several month) run for a local theater. So I got to know the musical version of this property very well. What surprised me in revisiting the original film is how faithfully Brooks lifted almost all of the dialogue for his musical version, with only a few changes along the way. With my year plus experience on the musical, I therefore might have been able to recite most of the film along with the actors as I watched this time, but I was too busy laughing. The Producers can admittedly be a bit too manic for its own good at times, but it's so full of wonderful little bits that it's hard to complain too vociferously about anything. Mostel and Wilder make for one of the most lovably dysfunctional producing pairs since Feuer and Martin (now there's an inside joke). This Blu-ray offers great video and audio and comes replete with all the Special Edition DVD supplements (save for the OCR ad), as well as a brand spanking new featurette. Highly recommended.
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