Not only does Young Frankenstein, the movie, not need to be a musical, it dies if it is turned into one. Why? Because the film is a spoof of 1930s Universal horror pictures, a genre about as far away from musicals as you can get. And therefore, the funniest moment in the picture is when a big musical number from an Astaire/Rogers white-tie-and-tails RKO musical comes flying in from out of nowhere. It's so unexpected--in the movie--you're left gasping with laughter. But turn the whole show into a Broadway musical and "Puttin' on the Ritz" goes from being unexpected to being inevitable. "Inevitable" is just about the opposite of "funny." And for my money, nothing else in the original movie was so hilarious that it really needed repeating.
If Brooks wanted to musicalize another one of his films after The Producers, he might have been better off trying High Anxiety. I always thought the idea of a Hitchcock musical, or a spoof-Hitchcock musical, had possibilities. In the right creative hands. |
