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83It's a classic example of how a movie can be great without, strictly speaking, being good. But when something is this funny, who wants to speak strictly?
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75It was fun, it was funny, it was alive.
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75Susan Stroman directed the show on Broadway and what she has done here is photograph that show -- no more, no less. This is good news for anyone who couldn't afford a trip to New York and $100 tickets, but it's a fairly odd approach to cinema.
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75Once you drink The Producers' Kool-Aid, it's a thoroughly enjoyable descent into madness.
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75Producers hits few wrong notes on the big screen.
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70The result is largely a giddy, goofy delight.
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70Broderick is a genuine trouper, hoofing his way through his big numbers, while Lane's antics are difficult to resist.
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70In the end, The Producers is an enjoyable romp, and at times--as when Hitler sings "Heil Myself"--it's hilarious. But it's not transcendent.
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70There's no attempt to address the show's endemic weak spots--a slow start and a contrived end. Mostly Stroman just lets it rip. But in some respects the movie is an improvement on the show.
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70It's too long to be great and it's too square to be great and it's too loud to be great and it finds homosexual effeminacy too funny to ever be called great, but I can't imagine anyone coming out sadder than they went in.
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70Brooks's sweetness, innocence, and boundless love of the infantile inform everything from the brassy production numbers (capped by an homage to Jailhouse Rock) to the final credits.
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67In the world of Mel Brooks, everything is fair game and anything is good for a laugh. God bless Mel Brooks.
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67The new film is a nauseatingly unsteady medley of brilliance and foolish nonsense.
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63Enough is enough. Somebody should just stop remaking The Producers.
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60As a chance to see the celebrated Broadway show with the original cast, this is a treat. As a re-interpretation of a classic, though, it's a disappointment.
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60So determinedly old-fashioned it makes a strong claim to being the best film musical of 1959.
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50The best two performances belong to Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell. For the film to work, though, the two best roles should belong to Tony-winning Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the title roles.
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50Stroman should have studied the original Producers that Brooks directed in 1968, with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. It answers the question "Where did they go right?"
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50The chemistry is intact, but performances that were reaching-for-the-balcony big on Broadway haven't been scaled back a bit for a more intimate, up-close medium.
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50If you have seen the play, especially if you've seen it with the original cast, treasure the memory and protect it. The movie will attack it like a virus.
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50Most of the bits and performances have a hard time making the transition from stage to screen.
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50The film falls short even as a record of Broderick and Lane's crowd-pleasing rapport: Both have done the show so many times that every scrap of life is gone.
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50The Producers is a movie based on a play based on a movie about a play. And that's probably the funniest thing about it.
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50This is the stage experience documented on film, from the perspective of someone sitting front row centre watching actors pitching for the back rows of the balcony.
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50Brooks gives himself the last word, appearing onscreen for the first time amid chorus girls oozing PG-13 pulchritude. "Go home!" he says. "It's over!" Could he be referring to his career?
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50It's the curse of overacting and overdone shtick that does them in.
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50The accountant in Bloom would probably approve of the new Producers: It's an efficient extension of a popular brand. In theory, what's not to like? In reality, the whole schmear.
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50Can't find its rhythm and stride. It plays it far too safe and slick.
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50The musical film version of The Producers is, for better or worse, a faithful record of the stage production, adhering to the same if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it philosophy that informed the recent "Rent."
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50The theatricality is off the charts. Lane aims for the balconies; Broderick tones it down for the camera a bit.
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40Watching The Producers is simply exhausting.
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40Whereas the original film is gleefully crass and energetically paced, the movie musical, weighing in at a robust two-plus hours, is bloated and self-satisfied. Whatever spectacle the stage musical possessed to make it such a box-office behemoth fails to transfer to the screen.
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40Ms. Thurman is the one bit of genuine radiance in this aggressively and pointlessly shiny, noisy spectacle.
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The Producers on screen, as a musical, does not work. It is not very funny. It doesn't look right. It's depressing.
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From bad to worse - Even in verse - The Producers moves like a hearse -Mildness and blandness -Mugging like madness - Who knew that "Rent" would win this fight? - Murdering a genre's just not all right!
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20There are no real people in The Producers --only actors laboring to dispel whatever magic they once were thought to possess. The director, Susan Stroman, has brought the Broadway smash to the screen (where it began, almost 40 years ago) with cataclysmic results.
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20The Producers is nightmarish, in its febrile way, a head-bangingly primitive version of an overrated Broadway show that grew out of a clumsy 1968 movie with an inflated reputation.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 42 out of 59
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Mixed: 5 out of 59
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Negative: 12 out of 59
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Ken6Though some of the humor falls flat and it suffers from an unbearably long ending, The Producers is quite a fun and exuberant movie.
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RoyR.0
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JohnH.8