Hi, this is me, your Movie Maniac, one of the professors at the Movie Madness Podcast University. I’m here with something quite disturbing; I woke in the middle of the night with visions of Mel Brooks tap dancing in my head (sugar plums are far more comforting); I also had an epiphany. I finally know what happened between High Anxiety and Spaceballs. Well, History of the World: Part 1 happened too, but that doesn’t count.

In my dream, Brooks was doing the Putting On The Ritz number from Young Frankenstein, complete with the scantily clad Mel Brooks dancers, when like a lightning bolt I knew why I loved High Anxiety and hated Space Balls. Now, be patient I’ll get there…

Earlier in the day, the wonderful documentary, Mel Brooks: Make a Noise, was on Netflix and I couldn’t help but watch it. While enjoying the film an old concern struck me: what de hell happened, as Mel might have said.  That’s when the disturbing dream came in to play. I realized as Brooks was dancing, “harrumph,” that, in the earlier films, Brooks was paying homage. The original movies were always in the background as subtext. In the new films he was making fun, or mocking: Robin Hood: Men in Tights, really?

In Make a Noise, Brooks explains that he sat with Alfred Hitchcock to watch High Anxiety and nervously awaited his opinion. When Hitch liked the film, even commenting on the draining ink from the newspaper seeming eerily like the blood circling the drain in Psycho, Mel was thrilled. With Spaceballs he just kind of asked George Lucas for permission. According to Brooks, in the documentary, all Lucas made him promise was “no action figures.”

Before all you fellow movie geeks get up in arms, I actually grew to like Spaceballs, despite it mocking one of my favorite films: Star Wars. Even worse, is the aforementioned Robin Hood: Men in Tights. I was horrified when I first watched it…horrified I say! Swashbucklers are my favorite genre and to mock them is tantamount to celluloid blasphemy. To this day I can’t even look at a clip of Tights without cursing. I want to find Mr. Brooks and violently shake my finger at him. (H’m, do you think maybe I’m wound too tight?)

I grew up on Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power and Douglas Fairbanks, et al.. I expected to see an hilarious homage to the original The Adventures of Robin Hood, not just lots of vaudeville style mocking. Certainly Mel Brooks is incredibly funny but the artful crafting of his earlier films seemed to have been replaced by scatological humor and the equivalent of fart jokes, Blazing Saddles notwithstanding.

Lest you think I’m being too sensitive I’d like to bring up some examples. The Court Jester is a wonderful spoof of Robin Hood (and the genre in general). Airplane is about as silly as a film can be but still maintains a loving relationship to the disaster films from whence it sprang. Scream is another great film, that just happens to make it easier for me to watch slasher films, and yet, as “spoofy” as it may be, maintains the integrity of the original.

The last example is Dr. Strangelove. One of the great comedies of all time and also one of the best spoofs. Stanley Kubrick was at his absolute best when directing it and Peter Sellers at the top of his career. Each of these films was wildly funny and yet serious film making. Not to be too harsh, but it seems Mel Brooks should have stuck to the date that brought him.

Having expostulated enough I shall step down from my soapbox and say that Mel Brooks, I love you. Your performance as the 2000-year-old-man is classic comedy at it’s best and your earlier movies are some of the best comedies ever made. I just have one wish. I would love to see you remake Young Frankenstein for the 21st century. That would make up for Men in Tights. Few people have remade their own movies and done it as well as undoubtedly you could. Though you may have to update the humor and enlist a few writers from the hip-hop generation, but I think it would be great!

Monumentally stupid, ridiculously unfunny and devoid of any redeeming value, Mortdecai is quite possibly the worst comedy ever made. There may be worse, but I take a great joy in not having seen them. I have, however, seen Mortdecai and it is terrible.

Four of my favorite actors: Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor and Paul Bettany manage to take a horrible plot and story elements and, with great skill and dexterity, make them even worse. Not to be too harsh, but I think a good horse whipping is clearly in order.

I cannot express enough my extreme disappointment in Johny Depp. With a goofy accent, foppish eccentricities and a cowardly aspect he manages to destroy any hope of Mortdecai, his character, being engaging. He is as close to an opposite of Captain Jack Sparrow as possible. For an actor famous in his quirky roles Depp simply flopped.

Paltrow is Johanna Mortdecai, as always, beautiful, charming and clever, but even she does nothing to elevate this worst of all films. Her character is stuck in a one joke loop with Depp and her flirting with McGregor’s Police Inspector Martland is bland.

Paul Bettany is Jock, Mortdecai’s manservant and stuck in the same type of one joke loop as Paltrow: he gets shot, stabbed and run over in place of his boss over and over again to no point.  Unfortunately Jock plays the fool. The fool that gives his loyalty to Mortdecai, a cowardly, sniveling wretch who’s only positive characteristic is that he’s not too dishonest.

Perhaps this story works as a novel but it fails horribly as a movie. Far better to have been written as the Pink Panther hero: Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers)-heroic, but clumsy. Clouseau at least has some strong positive traits. There is no trait to Mortdecai that makes him worthy, either of Jock’s respect or Johanna’s love.

The cast and creators of this reprehensible piece of work should be turned over to Seth Rogen and James Franco for six months as punishment. The inane conversation and constant dope smoking could, at the least, do no harm. And their movie, The Interview, was watchable.

Please, I beg of you…be prepared before you see this movie. Perhaps get plastered or loaded before seeing this movie. At least have a  large bottle of stout wine by your side. This movie is so bad it deserves never to be seen sober or straight.

Rating: 0 stars out of 5