The Producers

We went and saw The Producers last night. It just came to a theater in our area this past week. We seem to live in a cultural dead zone. Any film that shows in limited release never gets anywhere close to the Fox Valley. I’m not sure why. For example, I’ve wanted to see Brokeback Mountain for a while now. It opened a while ago but probably won’t be coming anywhere near me. Another movie I’d like to see that I highly doubt will come to this area is The Squid and the Whale with Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels. This same thing happened with The Door in the Floor. Perhaps I should be grateful for that though. I would have been ticked off if I had paid $8.50 to watch that movie.

Anyway, I had seen the stage version of The Producers starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick a few years ago. I liked it but was afraid it would be difficult to translate to the silver screen. So many plays and musicals have been transposed from one media to another and something gets lost in the process. This doesn’t seem to be a problem for this show. Granted, it was originally a movie which got turned into a play which got turned into a movie. Perhaps this explains why it seemed just fine in either form. Will Ferrell was hilarious as Franz, but when he falls down the stairs and says “I broke my leg”, all I could think of was his character, Mustafa, in Austin Powers. It sounded exactly like it did when he gets thrown down into that pit and gets shot and all that. Heh. Uma Thurman surprised me in that she seemed to dance pretty well and (assuming it was her) sing decently. Her accent was sketchy, but it worked. All in all it was a good movie. Adam liked it as well and is already saying he plans to buy the DVD when it comes out.