Oh the irony of the last sentence of the previous review followed by the original movie with a lower score than the remake. Allow me to explain that in this case it is different as the original movie was written with a play in mind but speaking to the powers that be explained that this was too big for the stage and should be a movie. So, they ran with it being a movie and was apparently successful. It was released in 1967 and written and directed by Mel Brooks and starred Zero Mostel (as Max Bialystock) and a young Gene Wilder (as Leopold Bloom).
The story follows Leopold as an accountant who goes to the books of producer Max following a string of flop theatre products Max is on hard times and Leopold discovers that he had raised too much money for his last production but spent it accidently. Max gets Leo to do some creative accountancy to hide the error. Leo then theorises that you could make much more money with a flop that you could with a hit. Max seizes the opportunity to recruit Leo to do the dodgy books and turn them both into crooks, very rich crooks. They then look for the worst play to sign up to do, the worst director, the worst actors and the worst possible production ever to ensure the flop and escape to Rio with pockets full of cash. Well that’s the plan, what could possibly go wrong.
So why is this ‘classic’ not as good as the remake. As I mentioned before this is the original the remake isn’t strictly a remake. This is still funny and many of the jokes of this versions are copied and identical to the remake. They do stand the test of time and some have become grey and haven’t aged so well but it is not a bad movie. Loving the remake and how they changed this original idea is better in my opinion but this still has some charm and is likeable but slightly crusty around the edges it is still enjoyable.
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