Those who’ve been rendered helpless with giddy laughter by Mel Brooks’s 1968 hit film The Producers are in for a minor disappointment with the glossy 2005 remake, directed by Susan Stroman, who also directed and choreographed Brooks’s Broadway version of the movie.

Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) has been reduced, after a string of flops, to romancing old ladies in order to raise funds. Along with his accountant Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick), Bialystock schemes to make money by producing a flop. A search for the worst play ever written leads them to Franz Leibkind (Will Ferrell), a neurotic Nazi-lover who keeps pigeons for company. They decide to produce Liebkind’s paean to Adolf Hitler, Springtime for Hitler, and enlist Roger De Bries, a campy director known for his terrible musicals.

Insanely funny and politically incorrect, The Producers takes digs at Hollywood and Broadway. Along with Brooks’s clever script, Lane, like a grasshopper on speed, steals the show with his energetic performance and impeccable comic timing. Ferrell isn’t far behind as an over-the-top helmet and lederhosen-wearing German. However, Uma Thurman isn’t exactly the perfect choice to play Bialystock’s sexy, Swedish secretary Ulla. Stroman lets loose extravagant sets and leggy tap-dancing showgirls, but the musical numbers drag the plot down.

Among this DVD’s features are outtakes of Lane and Broderick enacting the movie’s funniest scenes and a documentary on the making of the movie. Pronoti Datta

Region 5. English subtitles.
Sony, Rs 599.