The Master of Parody takes on the Master of Suspense in "High Anxiety."
As insinuated in the headline for this review, this movie seems to operate to me as a sort of "Blazing Saddles" Lite. The two films even share two actors besides Mel Brooks, those being Madeline Kahn and Harvey Korman. I make this comparison because this film has a similar style of humor, yet the jokes are not quite as clever and they don't come as fast as in "Saddles."
But, it's not exactly fair to compare these two films, so let's look at "High Anxiety" on its own.
Starting with the script, the dialogue is written in a way that is rather corny at times to parody the seriousness and arguable melodrama of films like "Vertigo." It's fairly amusing, but not as much so as the visual gags, which really drive the humor of the film.
As for the acting, in comedies like this, the way to judge an actor's performance is by judging their ability to react to the comic goings on around them. As to this, everyone here does a fine job. Kahn and Brooks play their straight dialogue in just that way while Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman relish their roles as villains who are so cartoonishly evil that they might as well be twirling their mustaches the entire time.
Finally, the direction. The whole thing is shot and scored very dramatically, going as far as to have the characters look into the camera during loud and bombastic music cues. This also serves to parody the style of Hitchcock.
As mentioned earlier, most of the jokes are visual in nature. They are consistently funny and there are only a few that don't quite land. Brooks paces the action in a way that makes the jokes somewhat unexpected, if nothing else.
Overall, this is a solid tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and a decent entry in Mel Brooks' filmography. It's main flaw is that it simply isn't quite as funny as some of Brooks' other work. On its own, however, it works quite well. Sit back, relax, and try not to get any "High Anxiety."
As insinuated in the headline for this review, this movie seems to operate to me as a sort of "Blazing Saddles" Lite. The two films even share two actors besides Mel Brooks, those being Madeline Kahn and Harvey Korman. I make this comparison because this film has a similar style of humor, yet the jokes are not quite as clever and they don't come as fast as in "Saddles."
But, it's not exactly fair to compare these two films, so let's look at "High Anxiety" on its own.
Starting with the script, the dialogue is written in a way that is rather corny at times to parody the seriousness and arguable melodrama of films like "Vertigo." It's fairly amusing, but not as much so as the visual gags, which really drive the humor of the film.
As for the acting, in comedies like this, the way to judge an actor's performance is by judging their ability to react to the comic goings on around them. As to this, everyone here does a fine job. Kahn and Brooks play their straight dialogue in just that way while Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman relish their roles as villains who are so cartoonishly evil that they might as well be twirling their mustaches the entire time.
Finally, the direction. The whole thing is shot and scored very dramatically, going as far as to have the characters look into the camera during loud and bombastic music cues. This also serves to parody the style of Hitchcock.
As mentioned earlier, most of the jokes are visual in nature. They are consistently funny and there are only a few that don't quite land. Brooks paces the action in a way that makes the jokes somewhat unexpected, if nothing else.
Overall, this is a solid tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and a decent entry in Mel Brooks' filmography. It's main flaw is that it simply isn't quite as funny as some of Brooks' other work. On its own, however, it works quite well. Sit back, relax, and try not to get any "High Anxiety."