Mel really should've looked more intensely at some of Buster Keaton's work before filming this series of lame sight gags for his Silent Movie. Once you've heard that the only character to speak even one word in this film is Bip, the best-known character created by the mime Marcel Marceau, you know everything interesting about this film.
I did laugh twice at politically incorrect jokes making fun of a fatty & a blind man, but mostly this was one long laughless bore.
The bored audience I viewed it with way back in 1976 laughed even less than I did, & its not one of those films that has gotten better with age. For Mel at his best, see Blazing Saddles, 12 Chairs, High Anxiety, Young Frankenstein, & The Producers.
The riotous genius of his best films makes such duds as Men in Tights & Silent Movie almost bewildering.
But there's really no mystery as to what causes him periodically to flop. When in the midst of a new script, Mel liked to surround himself with paid assistants who are flunkies & sycophants or who may honestly & justifiably love him to distraction cuz he's a loveable guy. He gets all these adoring or suck-uup employees together on a regular basis to be his test-subjects for new gags, & of course they laugh their asses off, & that convinces Mel all of it really is just terribly funny.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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