The official web site of A.H. Lloyd

I’m not a huge fan of Mel Brooks. He has his moments, but he also tends to belabor the joke, trying to hard to make the gag stick. He’s something of the opposite of the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker team that sends out jokes with a firehose and if some miss, you don’t have time to dwell on it. Brooks often drops a clunker and then stares at it, hoping it will move.

I literally fell asleep in the theater while watching Robin Hood: Men in Tights. I though Spaceballs arrived years too late, and anyway Hardware Wars was more efficient.

That being said, I used to regard Blazing Saddles as some of his best work, a true laugh riot. I watched it last night with my 20-year-old daughter, and while it still cracked me up, she was plainly underwhelmed. She loves a good joke, but they just weren’t landing.

I think a big part of it is that the film is very dated. Unless you grew up with classic Westerns, most of the jokes are lost. Modern Westerns aren’t about noble cowboys defending the weak – they’re more likely to be nihilistic if not explicitly anti-settler.

The sex gags involving Brooks himself were pretty bad, and many of the cultural references were completely lost. The whole “Headlee” thing is a complete miss for the contemporary audience.

That being said, she cracked up a few times, but there was simply no comparison to Airplane!, which remains absolutely hilarious. Indeed, it’s funnier now than when it came out in a lot of ways. Sure, Barbara Billingsley and other parts have lost some of their punch, but you don’t have to know she was Beaver’s mom to find her speaking jive a laugh riot.

I’m going to rewatch Young Frankenstein, which I remember to be a better film, and it’s probably more relatable thanks to all the Frankenstein remakes.