“This is shit”: the movie Mel Brooks called the stupidest in cinema history
Even though he found his greatest successes by creating a highly specific cinematic subgenre, when it comes to movies, Mel Brooks is a man for all seasons.
His first loves were the string of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, and they remain his personal favourites, but his taste extends well beyond ‘Golden Age’ song-and-dancers and the other films of the time that enthralled and terrified him, namely Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein.
The veteran appreciates modern comedians like Sacha Baron Cohen and Seth MacFarlane, anointing them as the closest thing he has to 21st-century heirs, but some of the titles he’s revealed to have a soft spot for over the years indicate that he’s a man who refuses to be constrained by decade or genre.
After all, he used to watch Ridley Scott’s Gladiator at least once a month with his long-time best friend and partner in crime, Carl Reiner, and the dynamic duo admitted that any movie that involved the words “secure the perimeter” was all they needed to hear to know that it was going on the watch-list.
The EGOT-winning icon also included Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity, Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, and Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind among his picks for the ten best films to have been released since 2000, so if nothing, the man’s got range as an audience member.
However, it would appear that he draws the line at dystopian action blockbusters that feature two musclebound ass-kickers with very different skillsets going head-to-head in a battle for supremacy, with Brooks making it abundantly clear that a 1993 cult classic was something he had absolutely no time for.
“Demolition Man,” he began. “Probably one of the greatest adventures in stupidity, one of the least important and dopiest films, right? You go to the commissary at Fox, and these schmendricks, these assholes, they’re all very proud because it’s done $27 million the first weekend.”
You may be detecting a scent of sour grapes in the air, and if not that, then some notable inaccuracies. Brooks’ release of that year, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, was a 20th Century Fox production that was released in July 1993. Meanwhile, Demolition Man, a Warner Bros film that debuted in October and made a little over $14 million in its opening weekend, which was still over twice as much as his comedy.
“Now, I don’t want to seem bitter,” he concluded, despite sounding it. “But I jumped up on the table, and I said, ‘This is shit. This is ridiculous’. I said, ‘We have to run Grand Illusion and Demolition Man side-by-side, just once, to see what a great movie is.” Sylvester Stallone and Jean Renoir would make for an interesting double-bill, if nothing else, but Brooks’ hatred for the bombastic actioner was palpable. Maybe someone should have given him three seashells to wipe away those tears of indignance.
