Packaged laffs
DVD / Three DVD comedy collections stand out this season, packaged with intriguing extras and backstories, featuring the talents of Mel Brooks, John Cleese and Rowan Atkinson. Here’s our rundown, packaged with arguable comments.
The Mel Brooks Collection (Out Dec. 15)
Then-jokesmith Mel Brooks was discovered by comedian Sid Caesar early in the run of Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, a 90-minute revue that aired in the early 1950s. The story goes that show producer Max Liebman refused to hire Brooks, but Caesar paid him out of his own pocket–and let him sit in the hall outside the writers’ room, with the door propped open. Brooks’ brilliance soon shone through, and he was hired as part of the legendary writing team.
Brooks continued to write for Caesar for the next few years in a couple of new series (Caesar’s Hour, Sid Caesar Invites You) and specials on two networks. When Brooks later went into movies, he hired Caesar for two of them (Silent Movie, History of the World, Part I). After nine movies, all packaged in this collection, Brooks moved to Broadway, doing musicals based on two of these films (The Producers, Young Frankenstein).
It’s an uneven collection, featuring high points (the aforementioned films) and low ones (Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It), but the crazy quilt Blazing Saddles is there–and still mysteriously hilarious, with such performers as Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman and the great Madeline Kahn (as Dietrich-like songstress Lilly von Shtupp). Young Frankenstein also holds up, with the later Peter Boyle (Everybody Loves Raymond) superb as the Monster. Nostalgists will like trying to identify a bevy of old-time comics doing cameos. Caution: low comedy ahead–and plenty of it.
Fawlty Towers (re-mastered)
This fabled 12-episode Brit comedy series, written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, is the show that refuses to be forgotten–and no wonder. A combination of old-time farce, slapstick and character-comedy, this tale of Basil Fawlty (Cleese) and his wife Sybil (Prunella Scales) running a middle-class hotel is irresistible. Fawlty is a vain, trouble-prone mismanager whose escapades encompass comedy styles from most of the last century. The series ran in the ’70s, but re-runs, most on PBS, continued for years and years.
Cleese, of course, was part of the original Monty Python comedy troupe before the short-lived Fawlty series. After those two series, Cleese did a series of movies (Privates on Parade, A Fish Called Wanda) and character roles in film and television. He also continued a lucrative series of industrial-training film and video shorts, which made him a wealthy man. His commentary on this packaged collection is brand-new, as are several other extras. Most of the episodes hold up beautifully, and can be see again and again.
Black Adder (re-mastered)
Rowan Atkinson is the most popular comic in Europe and the U.K., owing to his long-running TV series (three, including Adder, a cop comedy and the Mr. Bean franchise), movies and television specials, both in the U.K. and the U.S. Of these, Adder was by far the most popular in the U.S., with a stellar supporting cast including Hugh Laurie (House) and its unique format. Each season takes place in a different century, starting with Elizabethan times and ending in WWI, with Atkinson’s character remaining the same: a sly, sneaky hilarious Machiavelli fomenting chaos and misdeeds in often highly original ways.
The most expensive of these collections is Brooks’ (at $115), but each makes a great gift for the right person(s). There are guaranteed big laughs here, just in time for our regimented Jolly Season.
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