Blazing Saddles (1974)

A funny thing occurred to me while watching Mel Brooks' 1974 acknowledged comedy classic Blazing Saddles, right around the scene where Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little), still trying to find his way around the town of Rock Ridge, attempts to greet an elderly woman in town. (Her response: "piss off, n***er") At some point, it'll strike you that all of Brooks' films - whether good, bad or somewhere in the middle - contain the same brand of effected, almost forced, humor.

In Young Frankenstein, it might be Igor's command to Frankenstein to (quite literally) "walk this way." In Robin Hood: Men in Tights, just pick a joke: whether Ahchoo's hip-hop sequence or Maid Marian's Everlast chastity belt. Hell, he even makes reference to Blazing Saddles at one point! Brooks uses these sorts of routines so much that they ultimately belittle his comedic gravitas.

But what we realize with Brooks is that, with all of his jokes being made in a similar manner, it's really not the humor by which his films must be judged; it's the individual storylines and, more importantly, how successfully he weaves the humor into them.

And by that notion, Blazing Saddles really isn't a great film. Sure, you'll get your chuckles; I certainly got mine. And, yes, its handling of racial prejudices so shortly after the civil rights movement is a great source of comedy, probably one of the reasons it's viewed as a classic.

When you look at it a bit closer, though, there's not much of a story. Rather, it's a series of smaller events that build upon eachother and ultimately lead to, well...nothing. The conclusion really doesn't follow the events of the rest of the movie. Its sheer randomness is akin to watching an episode of "Family Guy." Or the middle third of The Shining.

It starts with conniving Attorney General Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) attempting to buy the town of Rock Ridge to destroy it and use the land for a railroad. The citizens, outraged, demand that their governor (Mel Brooks) send them a sheriff to maintain order and prevent their town's destruction. The sheriff is Bart (Cleavon Little), an African-American whom the 1874 Old West town predictably takes its time to warm up to. Hence, "piss off, n***er!"

The conflict is between Lamarr and Bart, and honestly can hardly be called a conflict at all. It's basically a series of cheap pranks, if you think about it: Lamarr tries to pull a fast one on Bart; Bart responds and turns the situation in his favor. Over, and over, and over.

Yes, you'll get your giggles, whether from Gene Wilder's "Waco Kid" (who "killed more men than Cecil B. DeMille!") or Madeline Kahn's Lili Von Shtüpp, a German chanteuse oddly reminiscent of Cloris Leachman's Frau Blücher. But the laughs never really amount to much because they're never quite given a solid context to fit into. As a result, the movie feels a bit stale before you've even reached the halfway point.

Don't get me wrong; I can see why Blazing Saddles is so well-loved. For its time, it's great; it has its place in history as a sort of building block toward the raunchy modern comedy of today. But in the end, it can't be judged as anything more than that.

2 stars out of 4