Life Stinks

source: Life Stinks

Goddard Bolt (Mel Brooks) is a wealthy businessman who doesn't understand why cutting down a rainforest or tearing down an old folks home might create problems, if such a thing is counter to his plans. He lives in a mansion and has three lawyers at his beck and call. However, he only owns half of a homeless neighborhood in LA and he wants it all, greedy man! Of course, his plans are to raze what's there and make a new neighborhood in its place. Although Bolt is willing to buy the other half of the neighborhood, the present owner convinces Bolt to do things a little differently. If Bolt can live for 30 days, as he has bragged, in the rundown neighborhood, he will win the land. If Bolt can't make it, he'll forfeit his own land. Bolt is game. He lands in the neighborhood and begins a journey to experience life as a homeless vagrant. Can he really survive this treacherous territory? This movie has some good ideas and some good scenes. Watch Brooks try to earn some money by tapdancing or attack his opponent with a construction shovel and you will be laughing plenty. But, the overall film is just average. It takes a good look at the homeless and the instrinsic worth of a human being, yes. But, the humor is just not there in abundance, unlike other Brooks' movies. Brooks tries hard, though, and Warren is winning as the most beautiful homeless woman ever on screen. If you like Mel Brooks, do not shy away from this film. Just be prepared to sit down to an only mildly entertaining film and one that is not particularly memorable.

This movie was a kind of turn for Mel Brooks. It was a return to his days of old, when his stories were not raunchy spoofs but human relationship comedies. However, there is one major difference between "The 12 Chairs" and "Life Stinks"- the first one is funny, the latter is not. Very simple. Some people whether or not homelessness is a good source of comedy. Well, maybe. I don't know. It's been used to good advantage before in "Sullivan's Travels"-perhaps because the situations there are cleaned up by the censors of the day. But the bums here are the type you'd expect to meet in a Charlie Chaplin picture. At the same time, there are scenes where it seems depressing. I felt depressed watching this movie indeed. The scene where the sleazy business man bribed the lawyers to convince Brooks that all his hard work was for naught is merciless. Overall, Brooks seemed to want to attempt another human values comedy, but like before, failed miserably at the box office and with the public. His films seem to be getting worse and worse, though they definitely follow a "good-bad-good-bad" pattern.

Mel Brooks' "Life Stinks" is nearly a total waste of film that is just saved by a couple of likeable characters and moments that keep the film above the dreaded turkey status. Rich businessman Brooks bets that he can survive on the rough streets of L.A. for a month. Of course he realizes that the homeless are people just like he is and he takes a liking to one of his new-found friends (Lesley Ann Warren). A movie that wants to be funny and also wants to send a message to its audience, but fails for the most part on both counts. 2 stars out of 5.

The most hillarious and funny Brooks movie I ever seen. I can watch and re-watch the tape 100 times. I laugh my a** off and I cry on some moments. It is really good and funny movie, and if you like Brooks - this is a must! In short - Brooks (billionare) gets to the streets as homeless for 30 days in order to win the entire poor district from his competitor. The reality bites, but in the end - it is about warm relations between humans... Hightly recommend!

Another chapter in the ongoing question, whatever happened to Mel Brooks's sense of humor? It starts out nicely enough, with Mel as Trump-like mogul Goddard Bolt ("You can call me God"), who accepts a bet that he can't live on the streets for 30 days. But the moment the movie hits the streets, it turns into a pathos-laden mess, with occasional "funny" bits interjected (Mel sees a black kid break-dancing for money and tries to do a vaudeville buck-and-wing, yuk, yuk). Leslie Ann Warren is nothing short of wasted. The worst part is this movie's musical number, in which Brooks and Warren do a silent dance to Cole Porter's "Easy to Love." Brooks's musical parodies are usually the highlights of his movies; here he plays the whole thing straight, like a dancing excerpt from an aging guest star on "The Carol Burnett Show" (on which Rudy DeLuca, this film's co-writer, began his career). Go rent Charlie Chaplin's THE KID, which covered the same ground 70 years before and did a lot

Brilliant over-acting by Lesley Ann Warren. Best dramatic hobo lady I have ever seen, and love scenes in clothes warehouse are second to none. The corn on face is a classic, as good as anything in Blazing Saddles. The take on lawyers is also superb. After being accused of being a turncoat, selling out his boss, and being dishonest the lawyer of Pepto Bolt shrugs indifferently "I'm a lawyer" he says. Three funny words. Jeffrey Tambor, a favorite from the later Larry Sanders show, is fantastic here too as a mad millionaire who wants to crush the ghetto. His character is more malevolent than usual. The hospital scene, and the scene where the homeless invade a demolition site, are all-time classics. Look for the legs scene and the two big diggers fighting (one bleeds). This movie gets better each time I see it (which is quite often).

This year is the 20th anniversary for Mel Brooks' underrated comedy Life Stinks, which was a departure for Brooks in that it was the first straight story he had done since The Twelve Chairs in 1970. It wasn't a parody of a genre like Spaceballs, Blazing Saddles, Silent Movie, and High Anxiety. This was a story trying to show us the plight of the homeless, which is all around us. How many panhandlers do we see on the subway going to work or outside a McDonald's that we brush off? What about the people who wipe windshields down at the Holland Tunnel? These are people who have been thrown away by the system that seems to thrive on keeping the rich in power and not understanding that as Brooks' character says, "Every person has the right to have a place to live." Brooks is showing us that it isn't easy out there and there are dangerous elements that we need to take care of. So why don't we try to deal with this problem? I have the answer from George Carlin's 1992 HBO special: There is no money to be made off the homeless. You need to have a solution that ends homelessness and have the corporate guys steal money in the process instead of just trying to care for your fellow man through human decency, which isn't going to happen because we are a selfish species who only care for our own welfare. As to this film, the best moment to me is when Brooks' character sees a homeless friend has died and he is just being taken away to the morgue. Watch how Brooks is acting in the scene. He realizes that there are many like his friend who have become victims and it is almost due to his past being uncaring about them, as he was in the opening scene, when he doesn't care about consequences to actions he is taking in tearing down people's homes. So why didn't this film do better in this country? Well, yeah, it was released under MGM, which had financial problems and still does, but I have the feeling that even if it had been released on 2000 screens at once, people would not have wanted to see a film that criticizes its country. Brooks himself mentioned how the film became a big hit overseas for him. I guess other countries were more open to our problems. We should not be patting ourselves on the back saying we're a great country. We have our own faults too and we need to look at them. It is so ever true today. The whole bit where Tambor's character bribes Brooks' lawyers to join him in betraying Brooks is just like the Wall Street meltdown of 2008. These guys could have been on Wall Street doing the same thing. I would've loved to have been a judge disbarring the lawyers that pulled this stunt on Brooks. Anyway, this is a film that should've won Best Screenplay at the Oscars as well. I hope that people seek out this film and realize, "There but for the grace of God, go I." In this day and age, this film was an omen.

This is not the typical Mel Brooks film. It was much less slapstick than most of his movies and actually had a plot that was followable. Leslie Ann Warren made the movie, she is such a fantastic, under-rated actress. There were some moments that could have been fleshed out a bit more, and some scenes that could probably have been cut to make the room to do so, but all in all, this is worth the price to rent and see it. The acting was good overall, Brooks himself did a good job without his characteristic speaking to directly to the audience. Again, Warren was the best actor in the movie, but "Fume" and "Sailor" both played their parts well.

I guess as we all get older, we feel the need to be more enlightened socially, and that's what this movie's all about. Take a rich man, throw him on the streets for 30 days, and a little backstabbing and you get a movie. This movie, while not on par with most of Mel's previous ambitions, is a nice movie. Leslie Ann Warren is pleasing as the bag lady. I enjoyed it, but it's not like Mel Brook's other movies. That's where most criticism comes in. If anyone else made this movie, I think it would of recieved a lot more praise. That's not to say Mel made no mistakes. Some of the scenes are downright dumb and make no real sense other than trying to make a joke. Then again, I think you can say that about almost every other movie too. I think most people could enjoy this movie on some level if they forget it's a Mel Brooks project, which is hard since he stars in it.