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'The Producers' lands somewhere between stage and screen

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The decision whether to check out "The Producers" can be fairly simple.

If you never saw Mel Brooks' long-running, Tony-laden musical on Broadway, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, by all means go. It's a faithful — at times, too faithful — version of the show.

Universal Pictures

'The Producers'

The verdict: Adaptation of Mel Brooks' musical is both too much and not enough.

Director: Susan Stroman
Starring: Will Ferrell, Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, Gary Beach
Run time: 134 minutes
Release date: Dec. 16, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for sexual humor and references.
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If you did see it, you may want to rent the original nonmusical 1968 movie with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder instead. Good as they are, Lane and Broderick can't match their predecessors' overwhelming havoc and hysteria. And even when it's at its best, the 2005 movie can't replicate the intoxicating connection Lane and Broderick created with a live audience — capering around the stage with all the comic insanity of Martin and Lewis at the Copa.

That said, the film does have some inspired moments — most especially the unforgettable "Springtime for Hitler," with its chorus girls forming an all-singing-all-dancing Busby Berkeley swastika. And Broderick and Lane's performances, while diminished, are still classic bits of consummate give-and-take, old-school schtick, made even better by their incomparable chemistry.

Lane plays unsavory Broadway producer Max Bialystock, whose meek accountant, Leo Bloom (Broderick), inadvertently hits on the startling equation that someone could make more money off a flop than a hit. So they team up and go in search of the fattest flop they can find. They come up with "Springtime for Hitler," a musical tribute to Der Fuhrer and the Third Reich, written by nutso neo-Nazi, Franz Liebkind (Will Ferrell).

Max raises money by courting sex-mad little old ladies (who cavort like a chorus line, walkers and all) and the partners hire a va-va-voom-ish Swedish secretary named Ulla (Uma Thurman), who takes a shine to the shy Bloom. But on opening night, not all goes as planned.

Everything in this film adaptation of "The Producers" is pitched to the third balcony. First-time director, Susan Stroman, who staged the original show, is nothing if not enthusiastic. She manages the mandatory stage-to-screen "opening up" rather well — the movie roams from Sardi's to Central Park to Rockefeller Center. But mostly the picture all but shouts "Laugh or I'll kill you" in the audience's face. Stroman has made no effort to scale down the shenanigans for film.

As a consequence, the stars often overplay so broadly many of the jokes are lost in the mugging. And yet, at the same time, the pair have been doing this for so long, some of their reactions and interplay come off as canned. Maybe even a little stale.

That's not meant to dismiss these gifted performers in their signature roles. Max and Leo are richly conceived, archetypal characters, and Lane and Broderick will always be a part of that richness, having created them, in their way, as much as Brooks did.

Ironically, the show-stoppers come from the supporting cast. Ferrell clowning around in his lederhosen, using his ungainly frame in almost ungodly ways. Thurman demonstrating her high kicks aren't confined to "Kill Bill" movies. Best of all, there's the brilliant Gary Beach, re-creating his stage role as the show's flamboyant director who ends up playing the title role on opening night. His fey, self-infatuated Hitler is beyond hilarious.

Somehow, Roger Bart gets it right as Beach's common-law assistant; he finds a balance between the to-the-rafters overstatement of Broadway and the more nuanced demands of film.

Unfortunately, "The Producers" as a whole never finds that essential equilibrium. It's not all it was on stage and it's not all it could be on film. The result is a often jolly, highly-polished compromise, which can't be what anyone intended. Or wanted.