Blazing Saddles 1974
Blazing Saddles is a classic comedy and Mel Brooks’ most successful movie. I watched it on TV a few times and maybe most recently in college when we spent the rest of the year quoting lines from the movie. Watching it again much later, the beginning of the movie is still funny, but the good jokes become less and less frequent as the plot starts to take over and in parts seems weighed down by Brooks clichés like German soldiers and yiddish jokes that have never been funny. Slim Pickens and Burton Gilliam are great as the racist henchmen and the source of the best laughs while Cleavon Little has the role of a lifetime as the black sheriff in an all white town. Madeline Kahn does a great job parodying Marlene Dietrich, but it seems amazing that the performance earned an Oscar nomination. Ultimately, a great comedy doesn’t have to be funny all the way through and can depend on just a large number of funny parts, which this movie certainly has, but there is a lot that just doesn’t stick.
Written: 18 May 2019
Owned on: Digital