Young Frankenstein

Why is Young Frankenstein better than everything else Mel Brooks has ever done combined? Usually in cases like this (the case of the single exception) I might make an argument that the exception is nothing like the rule. But Young Frankenstein is absolutely a Mel Brooks movie: sexist, derivative, offensive, and full of scatological humor. Statistically, the cast might be slightly more talented overall, but plenty of solid comic actors have slummed in Brooks's bad movies. Hell, Madeline Kahn is hilarious, and she's in practically every one of his goddamn movies.

Young Frankenstein should not be funny to me. Take the whole Monster's Big Fat Dick plot. A story so bizarrely and willfully naive about female sexual desire should make me feel puzzled and not at all entertained. But when Madeline Kahn starts singing, I snort appreciatively. Gene Hackman's cameo is an even better example. It is the worst, cheapest kind of humor. There is nothing clever about the idea of a blind man who is incapable of telling the difference between ladling soup into a bowl and ladling it into your lap. And while this series of jokes doesn't make me laugh (nor even snort appreciatively), it doesn't quite piss me off enough to stop me smiling at "I was going to make espresso." Or marveling at what Peter Boyle does with his eyes.

Peter Boyle was a genius. Without a single line of real dialogue in the first 90% of the movie, Boyle is the funniest part of the movie. His first line ("mmmMMMMMM") might be the best scene. Actually, my favorite moment is when he's playing with a little girl, throwing flower petals in a well until all the petals are gone. "What can we throw now?" says the girl naively. And the monster just looks at us. (Interestingly, imdb confirms that Young Frankenstein is the only project on which Boyle and Brooks are credited together. Perhaps Peter Boyle is the key to Mel Brooks not sucking?)