At just about three minutes of “action,” The Critic is the perfect length. It opens with some abstract animation–black shapes dancing around variously colored backgrounds, as active (versus tranquil) classical music plays. The designs get more complex, but for the first thirty seconds (so fifteen percent of the action), Critic plays it straight. It’s some abstract animation short. Not too complicated, but lively.
And then Mel Brooks asks, “What the hell is this?”
And The Critic starts on its path to sublimity.
For a while, it’s just Brooks talking about the action on screen. Dot moving over here, dot moving over there. Some shapes getting jiggy.
Brooks’s character is a cranky, impatient old Russian guy and we’re hearing his thoughts. It’s perfectly fine. Brooks is funny, it’s not going to go on very long, it’s all good.
Only we’re not hearing his thoughts. Or, more, we are hearing his thoughts. But so are all the other people watching the short film with him.
He’s in a theater, talking out loud. That detail gives The Critic the extra oomph it needs and pushes it up and over. It’s awesome.
Brooks ad-libbed the whole thing too. Apparently, the filmmakers didn’t even show him the short before he recorded.
Highly Recommended
CREDITS
Produced and directed by Ernest Pintoff; written by Mel Brooks; released by Columbia Pictures.
Starring Mel Brooks.
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