John Coleman
Last Updated on June 7, 2022, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 126
Mel Brooks uses bad taste rather as you and I would pass the salt. The Twelve Chairs is basically an unjustifiable nonsense, done in Yugoslavia on the cheap side …, presumably after The Producers and before Blazing Saddles. Set in a Brooksian notion of post-revolutionary Russia, it agitates itself about fellows chasing up a dozen gilt chairs in the hope of disembowelling the one that contains a tsar's ransom in jewels…. Mr Brooks, who almost wrecks the outing by turning up too successfully in it himself, as a masochistic ex-valet and all-purpose serf …, has thoughtfully written a flabby role which comes over as improvised as silly putty left to its own devices. (pp. 418-19)
John Coleman, in New Statesman (© 1975 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), October 3, 1975.
See eNotes Ad-Free
Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts.
Already a member? Log in here.