Robin Hood: Men in Tights

This was a very enjoyable spoof, but when watching it one thing stuck in my mind. It was when Robin said, "Unlike other Robin Hoods I do it with an English accent" which of cause was said as a joke to Kevin Cosner's "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves". But as I was thinking of other past Robin Hoods, I was reminded of two other Robin Hoods without English accents. One was Dick Gutier on a TV show called "When Things Were Rotten" and the other was George Segal in a TV movie called, "The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood". Both projects were produced by a short Jew from Brooklyn born with the name of Melvin Kaminsky. I wonder if Mel Brooks knows of this man.

This film is unnecessarily insulting to gays from start to finish. We are treated as a stereotype with only one purpose in life: to be ridiculed. What a waste - this film could have been amusing, but it is only hateful and destructive.

I thought this film was amazing and I laughed so much that I had to see it twice to catch the bits I missed whilst bending over holding my stomach! The critic who reviewed this film for this site challenged anyone with an IQ over their shoe size to find this film funny, well my IQ is approx:135...I challenge this person to question me and then eat his own words! This film is brilliant and if the critic above wasn't such a boring idiot, he might smile for once in his life and take things as lightly as they're meant!!! The musical numbers were so imaginative! EVERYONE when watching any film about that period of time will notice men in tights and realise how different it is to today's attire and how funny we would find today's male population if they wore tights day in day out! The idea of dedicating a song to butch men dancing in tights was so fresh how can anyone NOT laugh!!! (Plus also, seeing hip-hop rappers doing ballet is always hysterical-as a dancer also, I've done ballet and hip hop and danced with men who've had to do both....it still cracks me up each time!!!) I love this film, if anyone hasn't seen it yet, don't listen to the critic above...watch it and then decide for yourself!!!

It's my own private theory that the decade between roughly 1966, and roughly 1976, represents not just a sea-change/high-point/Belle Epoque of the arts in this country, but the duration of a force-field imposed by aliens who briefly took over our bodies and spent a long arts and crafts holiday here, giving us 2001 and REVOLVER and BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS and CLOSE TO THE EDGE and CHINATOWN and much more in the process; and when they left at last for their home world, the bodies they inhabited reverted right back to their true selves. In the case of Mel Brooks, through whose corporeal shell the Visitors had crafted THE PRODUCERS, BLAZING SADDLES and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, that means a pushy, tiresome, obnoxious hack. Well, it's as good an explanation as any, right? Brooks so totally lost the plot from the latter half of the 70s on that bodysnatching aliens and Faustian bargains spring naturally to mind as reasonable explanations: that's how fast, and far, he fell off the cliff. There isn't a single funny moment in his ROBIN HOOD spoof, but this is far worse than simply "unfunny". Few things in life are as painful to endure as third-rate comedy performed badly, by incompetents incapable of timing a gag or delivering even a throwaway line without stepping on the joke. Not that this is measurably worse than the half-dozen or so lead balloons Brooks made prior to this. On the other hand, it's every bit as wheezingly unfunny as they were. If it wasn't, would Dick van Patten even be in this? Yeah.... when I think of freewheeling, anything-goes absurdist satire, Van Patten's the first name that comes to mind. Oh, yeah....about those jokes. They're about on the level of a Bob Hope Special from 1971, only with the racier, edgier material cut out. "And this is my friend Will Scarlet." "Well, Scarlet's my middle name. (pause) My full name is Will Scarlet O'Hara. (longer pause) We're from Georgia." That's one of the better ones, folks. And even though the joke as written is terrible, and could never be made funny no matter how it was read, the tortuous Pasadena Playhouse pauses actually make the thing even worse than it already is. Which is pretty much this movie in a nutshell - bad ideas, made worse by terrible writing, further doomed by an unsuitable cast, all of whom flail away helplessly without any sort of competent direction. If you must see this, see it on basic cable so you'll at least have the cell-phone and diet soda commercials to look forward to. And maybe you, too, will wonder how it was possible anybody ever thought Mel Brooks was a genius, and how in the world did he keep getting money to make these godawful comedies. I can't help you with the second question, but as far as the first goes, trust me; it was the aliens.

It's obvious that Mel Brooks' best days were behind him in this costume comedy adventure that seems to be made for 10 year old boys. Sexy Cary Elwes goes back to "The Princess Bride" territory and finds that he's now in a mid evil Saturday morning cartoon. With Norm Lewis as wicked King John and Roger Rees as the evil Sheriff of Rottingham, Elwes has an easy chance of defeating the bad guys. Amy Yasbeck is a rather lame Maid Marian, while Brooks' toilet humor comes to life in Tracey Ullman's hideously crude sorceress, Latrine. Cameos by various familiar faces, including Brooks himself, can't aid this from being anything more than an outrageously dumb and desperate attempt to capture the success of his '70s masterpieces. Novelty musical numbers may have work when done in small doses in Brooks earlier films, but here he obviously was not prepared for writing a full musical score. Who would believe that less than a decade later he would have a smash hit on Broadway by writing the songs for the for the stage version of "The Producers"? This has the comic equivalent of a 20 minute short that appears to have been rushed together. Broadway had better luck in spoofing British history with "Monty Python's Spamalot" and "Something Rotten" where modern cultural references were actually funny and appropriate rather than just randomly placed and really having no effect. One funny line has Elwes indicate that unlike other Robin Hood's (Kevin Costner, anyone?), he can speak with a genuine English accent, and sure enough, he is right. Elwes is charming and as perhaps the only subtle humor that this film has, but repeat of old gags that Brooks is overused just come off as eye rolling and dated. It simply just is not funny. Comedy truly is a very difficult thing to do, and simply by throwing funny people into an allegedly funny script doesn't mean that you're going to end up with a funny movie.

There are reasons Mel Brooks gave up his directing career. Robin Hood: Men in Tights is one of them. From the man behind some of the greatest works of spoof comedy ever to grace the screen such as Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs comes one of the stupidest, driest, most pathetically unfunny spoofs I've ever seen. Robin Hood: Men in Tights is a spoof of the typical Robin Hood story, chock full of over the top gags that feel more like someone desperately trying to be as funny as Mel Brooks and failing miserably. It is shocking to see how someone can go from Blazing Saddles to this mess of a spoof. Why Mel Brooks? Why? A Robin Hood spoof from the king of spoofs should have been great. There is a world of possibilities when it comes to spoofing a tale as classic as Robin Hood, but this film picks from the absolute worst possibilities and floods us with terrible gags and ridiculously unfunny jokes. You know it is a problem when I literally can't refrain from voicing my opinion during the movie while I watch it alone. It basically goes like this. Robin Hood addresses a crowd and says to them, "Gentlemen! Lend me your ears!" The crowd then proceeds to remove their ears and throw them at Robin Hood, at which point I hang my head in shame and say out loud, "Oh my God. Really?" And this didn't happen once, or twice, or even three times, it happened over and over again. One bad pun after another led me to feel almost sick by the end of this movie. I laughed maybe once during the entire film, something that should not happen when watching a Mel Brooks spoof. Another lesson to be learned here is that the fourth wall shtick is only funny for so long. The scene in Spaceballs where Dark Helmet and his crew watch themselves on TV after putting in the Spaceballs VHS is plenty funny. The entire ending of Blazing Saddles where the entire setting becomes an old west sound stage is hysterical. These gags in Robin Hood: Men in Tights don't work at all. Characters running into the cameras and cameras breaking through windows as they zoom in too close to Maid Marion while she bathes are tired, old, and simply not funny. You have to know when to stop and Mel Brooks just got ahead of himself and took his once clever gag to the point where it was just plain miserable. Robin Hood: Men in Tights is missing one of the essential elements to any comedy and that's the whole being funny thing. It is an underrated element, but in its absence we are treated to an absolutely terrible film. And that is just what this film is. Terrible. I couldn't even force myself to pretend it was funny, much less actually laugh at its idiocracy and puns so terrible they would make cable news anchors cringe. I hope Mel Brooks was ashamed of himself after releasing this movie. I never thought he could so unfunny.

This flick is a perfect example of just how fickle the Comedy Muse can be. She is not a very faithful or reliable companion and can abandon even a most gifted comic writer, director and producer of TV shows and films like Mel Brooks. While she was definitely "all over him" during his creation of comic classics like the first season of "Get Smart" (Yeah!), "The Producers", "Blazing Saddles" and my all-time favorite Brooks concoction, "Young Frankenstein", she made herself pretty scarce on Brooks' other projects like "High Anxiety", "Spaceballs" – and this disappointing exercise in "how to make a comedy movie that's not very funny". What could have – and should have – been a Mel Brooks howler turns out to be nothing more than a boring yawn. It's little more than a compendium of clichéd and hackneyed one liners and slapstick gags and rehashings of things expropriated from Brooks' other more successful works. In fact, one of the lines from this clunker is "well, it (this gag I'm trying to make here) worked in 'Blazing Saddles'…" Yeah, well, unfortunately "it" didn't work in this film and only underscores the fact that it's dismally unoriginal. And when I say this flick was a disappointment, I mean Disappointment!!! No one loves parodies of classic action and adventure movies – swashbucklers in particular – more than I do and the great title of this flick really promised that it would be a real laugh riot. But, the Comedy Muse just wouldn't give us fans a break and bless Brooks with the inspiration – and material – to do justice to a subject which literally screams out for a good spoofing. Now, though the Comedy Muse was "out foolin' around' with other guys" during Brooks' work on this film (seems she really had the HOTS for Jerry Seinfeld at this time), she did drop back in on Brooks every so often so there were a few bright spots like Brooks, himself, as the Jewish Rabbi-in-place-of-the-Christian-Friar-Tuck and Dom DeLuise as a shady and effete "ferren" nobleman ala The Godfather (I admit to being really biased here as I like Dom so much, just seeing him appear on the screen doubles me over…). Even the usually lukewarm Richard Lewis does a better-than-expected job of portraying a mealy mouthed and bungling Prince John and delivers a few choice lines which managed to pry a twitter from my otherwise closed-in-deep-disappointment mouth. But these three characters really were much too little and much too hit 'n miss to save this turkey. What should have been a comic masterpiece turned out to be just another comic flop – thanks to Ms. Comedy Muse deserting Mr. Brooks at the worst possible (for us "lovers of good parodies") time.

This is on Epix right now. GODDAMN what an awful movie. I like Mel Brooks. In a list of the top 10 funniest movies I have ever seen, I would probably place at least 3 of his films: Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and High Anxiety. (Have never seen The Producers - the original with Wilder and Mostel - but I understand it is great, too.) So what happened here? Mel Brooks has simply forgotten how to be funny. I knew something was starting to go very wrong when I saw Spaceballs. It was the beginning of the end. While there were a few chuckles and 1 or 2 inspired bits (the endless ship at the beginning comes to mind) overall, it was a series of really bad puns and humor that few over the age of 12 would laugh at. Robin Hood - Men in Tights just took this drivel to a whole different level with bad writing, excruciatingly bad and embarrassing performances, and is just agony to watch. Retreads of old jokes, ("It's good to be king", "Hey, Abbott!") and truly unfunny parodies of what I'm still trying to get my head around calling a genre. (While the Robin Hood legend has been told and retold countless times, I'm not sure that qualifies it as a "genre") The sad thing is that Brooks himself did the whole Robin Hood thing much better in his mid-70s TV series, "When Things Were Rotten." There should have been an additional qualifier in the title of this waste of celluloid: "Robin Hood - Men in Tights - When Things Were Truly and Utterly Rotten"

I can scarcely believe that the same man...the same Genius...that directed "The Producers", "Young Frankenstein", and "Blazing Saddles" can possibly be the perpetrator of this...this...ABORTION! The aforementioned are some of the most profoundly hysterical films ever made by anyone. "High Anxiety" and "History Of The World: Part 1" weren't on that level, but were still exceptionally funny for the most part. I really, really liked his remake of Lubitsch's "To Be Or Not To Be" even though there was a much cruder edge. It was a step back up. I knew something had really changed, though, when I first saw "Spaceballs". For every joke that worked...and many still did...there were at least 4 or 5 that didn't. Then came the horrendous "Life Stinks" and I knew the downhill slide was rapidly accelerating, but until I saw "Robin Hood: Men In Tights" I hadn't realized how far he had fallen. Even going into it with low expectations I was flabbergasted. The "jokes" fly fast and furious, but they are so juvenile, so infantile as to be deeply embarrassing. I can't imagine that adults...actual grown people are supposed to find this funny. The abysmal puns and snickering smut jokes I would've laughed at when I was 5 or 6, but would've already been cringing at by the time I was 9. Knock-knock jokes are on a higher plane than this excrement. It's almost as if Brooks actually sat down and purposely collected the tiredest, lamest, most moronic, most cretinous, and just simply the WORST jokes he possibly could. It's almost as if he actually set out to make a bad movie. I can't think of any other explanation unless the man has just plainly and simply lost every shred, every vestige of his once mammoth talent. Loathe as I am to say it, but this seems to me the case. I have never seen "Dracula: Dead And Loving It", but if it's as bad as this...or even worse as per the trend I never want to, and I most definitely never want to sit through this sad, sorry excuse for a Mel Brooks film EVER AGAIN! Sad, sad, sad.

Actually, Mel's been here before. Any of you remember a little TV series Mel wrote and created called "When Things were Rotten", starring Dick Gautier as our man Robin? I do, and the series reran in my mind many times while watching Mel's big-screen take. I guess he had to do this to take a few shots at Kevin Costner's "Prince of Thieves", but this one also takes aim at and makes points of reference to "White Men Can't Jump", Bruce Lee films, Larry King, seders and even brings out the reserves from Mel's projects of yore (McCann, Van Patten, De Luca, De Luise). Some gags work, some don't but as always, Mel tries. Too bad he's working under the restrictions of that darned PG rating. What Mel could have done in his heyday with an R rated "Robin Hood"! Though admittedly, the finale of Robin's (Elwes') serenade to Maid Marian (Yasbeck) earns big laughs. Loved finding out the first name of the Sheriff of Rottingham (Rees), as well. You will, too. As I've said before, any Mel is good Mel. If you've seen any Robin Hood movie, good. You'll get a lot of the references here. Even with the Mafia connections, hot tubs, and the new Club for horses. Five stars. Bless you!