While everyone was looking the other way, Mel Brooks seems to have become an elder statesman.
As his films have become more widely spaced (”Life Stinks” is his first since ”Spaceballs” in 1987, which came four years after ”To Be or Not to Be”), Brooks has placed himself in the Streisand-Beatty-Redford category-free from financial pressure and working only when the mood strikes.
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It`s an unusual position for a comic filmmaker. Where most comedians, even the most successful ones, seem to continue to be driven by a need to make audiences love them, Brooks seems above all that. For a comedian, he is unnaturally smooth and secure, possessed of a perfect self-assurance that allows him to walk away from the game for years at a time.
The last comic to put himself in that position was Charles Chaplin, whose unequaled popularity in the silent era allowed him to face the talkies on his own terms, issuing one movie from the mountaintop every four or five years.
In some ways, ”Life Stinks” is Brooks` ”Modern Times.” After beginning his career as a broad burlesque comedian, as Chaplin did, Brooks is now trying to incorporate an element of social reality into his work. He`s got something to say.
In ”Life Stinks,” which Brooks directed from a script by Rudy DeLuca, Steve Haberman and himself, he plays Goddard Bolt (”God,” for short), a grasping, Trump-like Los Angeles real-estate tycoon.
On the eve of his greatest and most heinous triumph-the destruction of L.A.`s skid-row district to make way for a cold, impersonal Bolt City-Bolt allows himself to be lured into a bet by his most vicious rival, Vance Crasswell (Jeffrey Tambor). Crasswell will turn over a key piece of property if Bolt can survive for 30 days in the district without money or credit cards. It is, of course, harder than he thinks. Once Bolt has been dropped off by his limo and stripped of his gold card, he is kicked from sidewalk to bench to loading dock, unable to feed himself until he makes friends with Sailor
(Brooks` old ”Show of Shows” colleague Howard Morris), a veteran street dweller who shows him the ropes.
As always with Brooks, there are moments of absolute hilarity as well as extended passages that don`t work at all. What`s new is Brooks` grasping for pathos, both through the character of Sailor (who is meant to be a sadly genuine schizophrenic) and the beautiful bag lady Molly, played (not always with restraint) by Lesley Ann Warren.
Ironically, Brooks` Skid Row, which was photographed on location, seems less real than Chaplin`s, which was constructed in a studio. It may only be a function of Southern California, but there are bright colors and sunshine wherever Brooks` camera looks, and the streets seem to have been recently swept by the Disneyland litter patrol.
Unlike Chaplin`s, this is a poverty without pain, set in a basically benign, protective world that everywhere contradicts the film`s title.
But if Brooks doesn`t get the sting of reality he`s looking for in ”Life Stinks,” he does succeed with the film`s fantasy elements-most memorably, a dance sequence set to Cole Porter`s ”Easy to Love” and performed by Warren and Brooks in a colorful used-clothing warehouse.
From ”Springtime for Hitler” in ”The Producers” to ”The Inquisition” in ”History of the World, Part I,” production numbers always seem to bring out the best and brightest part of Brooks` talent.
Now that ”Life Stinks” has let him get the social realism out of his system, maybe someday he`ll come down from the mountain with a pure musical.
”LIFE STINKS”
(STAR)(STAR)(STAR)
Directed by Mel Brooks; written by Brooks, Rudy DeLuca and Steve Haberman;
photographed by Steven Poster; production designed by Peter Larkin; edited by David Rawlins; music by John Morris; produced by Brooks. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release; opens July 26 at the Esquire, Pipers Alley and outlying theaters. Running time: 1:37. MPAA rating: PG-13. Mild vulgarity.
THE CAST
Goddard Bolt…………………………………………….Mel Brooks
Molly…………………………………………….Lesley Ann Warren
Vance Crasswell………………………………………Jeffrey Tambor
Pritchard…………………………………………….Stuart Pankin
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Sailor……………………………………………….Howard Morris