The Producers

I just caught "The Producers" movie on TV. No, not the original "Producers" with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, but the new "Producers" with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick based on the Broadway musical. I saw (and loved) the musical the year it first opened--the year it won more Tonys than any show in history and that seemed to herald a new golden age for musicals--and yet this movie somehow depressed me. I think it depressed me because it was like a copy of a copy of a copy. The musical copied the original movie but magically improved upon it. This movie just copies the musical without new innovation and that's why it fails.

What Rob Marshall, the genius behind the "Chicago" movie, knows that Susan Stroman (the director of "The Producers" both on Broadway and on film) doesn't is how to make something theatrical cinematic. The reason "The Producers" was so wonderful on stage was that it was so theatrical: the big flashy numbers, the tap dancing old ladies, the giant mirror that descends so you can see the Nazis form a Rockette-like swastika. All of these things happen in the movie, and yet they lose their zip. A comedy must speed along or, in the dead air, you begin to think about logic and reason and the confection falls apart. "Chicago" is a comedy--a satire, really, of celebrity and America--and it's relentless with its speed, its sound, its images. And Rob Marshall (like Bob Fosse before him) knows how to edit. The cuts are rapid and smart--they're on beat with the dance. You'd think Susan Stroman, also a choreographer, would use editing to her advantage, but she doesn't. Many of the scenes in the "Producers" movie feel static. The whole movie, in fact, feels static, two-dimensional. Stroman's natural medium is the stage, and that's the tragedy here.

Still, as a preservation tool for the show itself (which has since closed) it's a useful artifact. If you didn't get to see The Producers on stage, this will at least allow you a glimpse of what it was like. And Nathan Lane is pretty wonderful--his comic timing and delivery matches that of all the great comics of the early 20th century: Laurel & Hardy, Bert Lahr. He's the best reason to see the movie. And of course "Springtime for Hitler" is a catchy tune...

Comments

[flutter]

Heil to myself!

Oh how I loved that play. I actually haven't seen the new movie, the old one was fabulous. I'll have to see the new one Uma as Ula has to be genius