Saturday, May 9, 2009

Silent Movie

Silent Movie. 1976 20th Century Fox.
Starring: Mel Brooks, Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise, Bernadette Peters, Sid Caesar, Harold Gould, Ron Carey
Also Starring: Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Anne Bancroft, Paul Newman, Marcel Marceau, Henny Youngman
Director: Mel Brooks
Amazon.com listings: Available as a single DVD, or part of the Mel Brooks Collection.

Mel Funn (Brooks) was once a great Hollywood director, but after a long battle with the bottle, his career went on the downward path. Not to worry, though, he has a great new proposal for the Chief of Big Picture Studios (Caesar), with the help from his assistants Dom Bell (DeLuise) and Marty Eggs (Feldman). Mel's new screenplay is for the first major silent film in forty years. The chief rejects the idea, but he changes his mind after a telegram comes from the New York conglomerate Engulf & Devour (Gould & Carey), who are definitely interested in engulfing and devouring Big Picture Studios. An agreement is made, provided Mel can attract some of Hollywood's biggest stars to be in the film.

Fun, Eggs and Bell go out and hire Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Anne Bancroft, and Paul Newman for the movie, but when they ask Marcel Marceau, he replies Non, which happens to be the only spoken word in the entire movie (this automatically makes this scene the most clever one in cinematic history, thank you very much). Engulf and Devour are worried that Mel will save Big Picture Studios, so they send Vilma Kaplan (Peters) to distract and seduce the director, and then pretend to fall in love with her. Mel falls for her, but realizes the truth the day before filming is to begin, which sends him back into alcoholism. This changes Vilma's feelings for him, and she gathers Eggs and Bell to find Mel and get him sober, which they do with the aid of several hundred cups of coffee. Evidentally, they never thought about caffeine poisoning.

The silent film is filmed and completed on schedule, but Engulf and Devour steal it from the theater before its world premiere. Vilma distracts the duo while Funn and company steals the film back, which results in the obligatory slapstick car chase and final fight scene involving cans of soda being launched like grenades. The film is brought back to the theater, where it's a huge success.

Recommended movie.

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