04/27/10 - Young Frankenstein

Young Frankenstein (1974, 106 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072431/

I decide to finish my Frankenstein trilogy with Young Frankenstein. Though completely different in style and genre than the first two films here, I kind of had been wanting to see this for a while. Though not a huge fan of Mel Brooks, this film is usually regarded as pretty funny.

The film follows Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) as he goes to his grandfather's castle to continue the life-bringing experiments. Helping him there are Marty Feldman as Igor and Teri Garr as Inga. Cloris Leachman has a smaller assistant role as Frau Blücher. Eventually, Frankenstein brings life to The Monster (Peter Boyle) and in a twist, Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn) falls for him.

First, I'm not a huge fan of the jokes of Mel Brooks. They seem too dated to me or something but they just don't work well. The same is true here. I get the impression was to just use as many jokes as possible, then trim away the bad ones and hopefully leave the above average ones. I mean, it seems like if there could be a joke made, it was almost always made. Sometimes this got tiring. Anyway, while I recognize that a lot of the times, the dialogue is quite witty, that doesn't mean I necessarily find it all that funny. However, there are a couple simply amazing scenes. The first of these is the game of Charades where Frankenstein has to provide clues to the word "sedative." The joke builds and builds and is handled really well. Next, there's the infamous "Puttin' on the Ritz" dance number with The Monster. I think this is the funniest part of the whole movie. Even with me knowing how most of it played out (due to it being such a popular scene), I still found it incredibly funny. Finally, there's just the various homages to the Frankenstein movies (many of which I got thanks to having just finished Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein). These are also handled pretty well in spirit but again the jokes frequently fall flat on me.

A big reason the jokes that do hit end up hitting so well is because of the acting. Wilder, Boyle, Garr, and Feldman all play off of each other amazingly well. However, I think Boyle stands above everyone else here. His portrayal of The Monster is unique (i.e. it doesn't try to exactly mimic that of Karloff) and he also provides his own humor to the character. So while I am still watching a creation of Frankenstein, this Monster is also a new creation which is great. Next, Garr is great for her role as just this incredibly attractive German assistant but she also holds her own in the acting department. Feldman creates an instantly memorable character in Igor. This is may be the character most people associate with the film as Feldman seems born to have played it. Finally, though, everything comes back to Wilder. Wilder does his absolute best to make each joke work as well as possible so I can't blame him in the acting department at all. He holds the entire film together.

Overall, I gave this film a 6/10. It basically suffers the same fate as Blazing Saddles: it's funny at times but it's also incredibly stupid (not in the funny way) a lot of times as well. I think the acting here is a bit better and the characters are pretty good for the most part but I just can't convince myself that this is a 7/10 film.