The Producers recalls the Technicolor MGM musicals of Hollywood’s heyday. It’s big, brash and unrealistic with unsubtle sets and lighting befitting characters that strip down to dancing tights and belt out a song. Lane, Broderick and Thurman (who knew she could sing?) may have star billing but the unsung hero of the film is Mark Friedberg’s production design. He opens up the movie not to true verisimilitude but the type of celluloid truth one associates with Busby Berkeley.In The Family Stone, cinematographer Jonathan Brown captures a picture-perfect postcard. There’s nothing out of place in the Stone household, with a décor realized by Jane Ann Stewart that’s worthy of a Norman Rockwell catalogue. Obviously the outwardly idyllic atmosphere is meant to be ironic—a pristine, unsullied environment as counterpoint to messy, fractious lives. And if there was any doubt of the salving effect, the sentimental airs of Michael Giacchino’s music score lull them into submission.Comedy isn’t pretty. What taps on our funny bone to elicit laughter lists toward some of our worst traits—cruelty, bias, feelings of superiority. It can be an edifying release for pent-up emotions or the escape valve for such repressed feelings or frustrations as anger and jealousy.We love to laugh. My doctor recently affirmed the old saw that it was the best medicine but added the caveat that a good diet was also very important. Humor simply isn’t politically correct and, try as I may, I haven’t been able to think of a single great politically correct comedy. In retrospect the political, sexual and racial jabs that have made me laugh in the movie theater have sometimes been embarrassing or contrary to my true nature, but I’ll defend most to my dying breath.The Producers and The Family Stone each wade into sensitive territory in an effort to make us guffaw, chortle and roar. Infidelity, racial and sexual stereotypes, greed, larceny and any number of values society holds sacrosanct are held up to ridicule.Unbridled bad behavior and the seduction of the innocent are at the core of The Producers, originally made in 1968 with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in what was Mel Brooks’ first screen effort. The saga of a once-prominent theatrical impresario who latches onto a Ponzi scheme proffered by a naïf accountant wasn’t widely seen when it was released. Nonetheless it won an Oscar for its script and over the years attained cult status, and was transformed into a Broadway musical in 2001 that was an outrageous commercial success.The new film is an adaptation of the musical with original cast members Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick reprising the roles of larcenous Max Bialystock and babe-in-the-woods bean counter Leopold Bloom. Susan Stroman, who directed and choreographed the stage hit, takes on those chores once more for her big-screen debut and serves up a not altogether deft mélange of filmed stage play with a smattering of location sequences to provide breadth and realism.For the handful of folks that have resided in a cave for the past three-and-a half decades, the clever scheme is to purposely mount a hideously shameful production that’s guaranteed to close moments after the curtain rises. The shysters will raise $2 million but spend just $200,000 and pocket the difference. The investors will be no wiser; knowing only that the show was a flop. To that end, Bialystock and Bloom select Springtime for Hitler, an homage to the Third Reich by the hitherto unknown playwright Franz Liebkind (Will Ferrell) and hire the town’s reigning director of bad taste Roger De Bris (Gary Beach).The fun of the piece stems from Bialystock’s unbridled and unquenchable pursuit of money. He is a true barbarian and his undoing provides rare satisfaction. Brooks cannot mask his affection for the con man and his skewered sense of morality. Nonetheless he’s due for a colossal comeuppance.Set in a bygone era somewhere between 1950 and 1970, the film recalls the Technicolor MGM musicals of Hollywood’s heyday. It’s big, brash and unrealistic with unsubtle sets and lighting befitting characters that strip down to dancing tights and belt out a song. Lane, Broderick and Uma Thurman (who knew she could sing?) may have star billing but the unsung hero of the film is Mark Friedberg’s production design. He opens up the movie not to true verisimilitude but the type of celluloid truth one associates with Busby Berkeley. It’s an apt compliment to Stroman’s dance numbers that are at once parody, social commentary and contemporary kinetic Terpsichore.The Producers is a romp oblivious to and delighted by its mean spirit toward homosexuals, senior citizens, Jews, Germans, blacks, the rich, alcoholics and anyone else foolish enough to get in its path. It would be difficult to match the zany invention of its inspiration, and while the musical does make several adroit contractions, it stumbles every time it segues to real Manhattan locations and seizes up when it mocks itself. They are nonetheless minor lapses in an otherwise brisk and assured yarn steeped in vitriol.The sense of outrage is considerably less apparent in The Family Stone, the tale of a dysfunctional family that tries much too hard to tie up loose ends and resolve problems with a neat bow. The New England household of the title is an eccentric clan with a penchant for the snooty and bourgeois. As they prepare for a Christmas dinner, anxiety rises for the anticipated arrival of eldest son Everett (Dermot Mulroney) and his fiancée Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker). Only one member has met her previously.Matriarch Sybil Stone (Diane Keaton) is an all too familiar ramrod figure that is intolerant to outsiders and endlessly forgiving of her brood, while her husband Kelly (Craig T. Nelson) skirts on her whims. They have a pregnant daughter, a slacker son and another male that’s gay and deaf. However any notion that the film will take on the contemporary trappings of Preston Sturges’ take-no-prisoners screwball comedies quickly evaporates. Writer-director Thomas Bezucha views his oddballs as the picture of normalcy and their gentle jabs at the neurotic Meredith are merely a means to affecting a happy conclusion. It is comedy performed with an all-too-evident safety net.Cinematographer Jonathan Brown captures all this as a picture-perfect postcard. There’s nothing out of place in the Stone household, with a décor realized by Jane Ann Stewart that’s worthy of a Norman Rockwell catalogue. Obviously the outwardly idyllic atmosphere is meant to be ironic—a pristine, unsullied environment as counterpoint to messy, fractious lives.The verity is that nothing particularly outré occurs and the minor abrasions are quickly taken care of with effective band-aid solutions. And if there was any doubt of the salving effect, the sentimental airs of Michael Giacchino’s music score lull them into submission.The Family Stone forgets the cardinal role about comedy not being pretty. Though gestures are made to be antic and irreverent, its heart wears cozy, fuzzy slippers and its characters deliver homilies rather than zingers. Stanley Kramer would have been delighted to invite them to dinner but he would have tossed in some jokes to pepper the proceedings.
Written by Len Klady
