I was so glad I finally got to see this online (again, via you-tube), because it's an incredible shot of comedy from the sharp-as-a-Jewish-tack mind of Mel Brooks. It's like Brooks stumbled into an avant-garde theater showing an underground short, like a slightly more sophisticated Brakhage short. Which makes it all the more uproarious, because these sorts of films DO take themselves way too seriously as art sometimes (sometimes the symbolism is deep and meaningful, but other times, as Brooks's old man comments that it's meaning is junk). We also get the insight that it's, of course, a "dirty picture" as he sees two amorphous shapes come together and "bond" in the ways that only abstract images from avant-garde filmmakers can do. But of course the director Pintkoff is in on the joke too, and shapes his movie in order to suit Brooks's lashings, despite the 'others' in the theater that just want silence. I think maybe a part of me just found it funny, in the first few minutes I mean, because it was Brooks doing such an over-the-top Russian caricature. But there's many, many great zingers in there, the kind that provided me the same belly laughs I had from the classics the Producers and Blazing Saddles. Though for some, since it's onlt 3 1/2 minutes long, there won't be much in the way of "story" to get in the way. It's just a cranky old man fobbing off on 60s experimental film-making- and an old man that could criticize anything any day of the week and make hilarious!
