HE RODE A BLAZING SAAADDLLLLEEE. This movie is awesome. Definitely one of Mel Brooks best, and absolutely one of his funniest. The satire is top notch, the writing is great and the jokes never stop coming. Ever. The plot here... really doesn't matter. I mean, there's a plot to run a small western town into the ground by appointing a black sheriff, but that seriously doesn't matter. It's a movie about how many jokes Mel Brooks can cram into 92 minutes. Spoiler: it's a lot. And he never stops once. And it's great. This movie is pure comedic anarchy. It never slows down once. Which really works. Most of the time anyway, but we'll get into that later on. For now, let's talk about Blazing Saddles!
I mean, you've got to give credit to the delivery of the jokes in this movie. They never stop. The jokes just keep coming at a dizzying speed, and when one fails, there's like three more that come directly after it that hit bullseye. It leads to the odd problem here and there, but for the most part, it's pure Mel Brooks. And that's a very good thing. The film is jam packed with his particular style of humour, and it's hilarious. Undoubtedly one of his more crass works (along with History of the World Part I, which is saying something), but it's also easily one of his funniest, and a lot of that is down to the cast. Cleavon Little, Madeline Kahn, Slim Pickens, Harvey Korman, and the man himself: Gene Wilder. The cast are consistently hilarious, especially Wilder ("My name is Jim... but people call me... Jim"). The guy really can never give a bad performance. He's charming, likable, and downright hilarious.
Another thing I love about this aspect is that everytime I watch the film, I always notice like ten jokes I missed first time around, so it's incredibly re-watchable in that regard. It never slows down, and it's a lot of fun. Unfortunately though, this has it's drawbacks.
Ignoring how well some of the jokes have aged (I mean, the movie just oozes political incorrectness as it is), my main problem with this movie is how messy it is. The movie is always throwing more jokes at you, which is often hilarious, but the chaos can just as easily become noisy and a little distracting. It works 90% of the time, but damn this movie can easily become messy with how fast the jokes are delivered. It's hilarious, but all over the place, and even quite in-your-face sometimes too. Like there is no subtlety. At all. There never is with Brooks anyway, but Blazing Saddles is a very loud film. The chaos is a double edged sword. It's hilarious, but can often descend into unfocused anarchy. Which is sometimes awesome, sometimes not so awesome. It doesn't ruin the movie, in fact it makes it even funnier, but I can see it getting annoying quick for some people.
But speaking of chaos: THIS MOVIE HAS THE BEST ENDING. Like... wow. The ending to Blazing Saddles drives a train straight through the fourth wall, if there even was a fourth wall to begin with. The ending is just insane. It's absolute madness, but the way it's done is just phenomenal. It escalates and escalates, and it just keeps getting more and more ridiculous. I love escalating craziness when it's done right, and it's hard to top Blazing Saddles' crazy ending. It's one of my all time favourite movie endings, which is definitely a topic for another day.
So yeah, Blazing Saddles can get messy at times, it can trip over itself, and I guess some dialogue hasn't aged too well, but as it stands, this movie's freaking awesome. Yes, it's got problems, but damned if it isn't one of the funniest movies I've seen. It's the sheer variety of jokes in this film, combined with the razor sharp satire (which I might have to talk about another day), that make it a classic. It's got Gene Wilder at his very near best, it's got amazing comedy, it's got social commentary, it's got the French Mistake, it's got it all. Forgive it's occasional slip ups, because this one deserves it's reputation. It earns a title as one of the funniest movies ever, and is a definite landmark for Brook's career. If you haven't seen it, definitely do so ASAP. It's worth it, and it should definitely be handed out to the boys in lieu of pay.
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