Mel Brooks has a truly baroque sense of humor, as his new film, Blazing Saddles, demonstrates. Such an eccentric wealth of material comes out of his imagination that this film is usually working full tilt on three different levels at once: social satire, straight, old-fashioned slapstick comedy, and parody of various other Hollywood genres, most notably, of course, the Western…. It is, as the saying goes, a sketch.

Unhappily, that's often all it is: a sketch. It's not enough to make up a whole movie. Despite generating some material that works on all three levels, Brooks doesn't always have what he needs to keep the film going…. Moreover, the multiple levels on which the film is attempting to work don't always enhance each other. At times, in fact, they cancel each other out, especially where Bart is concerned. This is because the social satire and the slapstick comedy make contrary demands on his role.

In Brooks' view the former requires that, as a black man, Bart see through the bigotries, hypocrisies and illusions of the whites. He must be capable of a knowing, almost indulgent reaction to them. For instance, when he first arrives in Rocky Ridge, the town where he's to be sheriff, the entire population draws on him. To escape Bart pulls out his own gun as if he too were getting the drop on himself. Having thus taken himself hostage, he edges himself through the crowd toward the refuge of the jail.

This is a funny bit too, until Bart makes it to safety and at once shrugs off these gullible yokels with an unconcerned air. Before the comedy has successfully run its course, such a gesture of bemusement, repeated at the conclusion of skit after skit, kills the laugh every time. Whatever the gesture might do for the social satire, it is a wet blanket on the slapstick. The mise en scène of slapstick is destroyed when the protagonist suddenly switches from being the hapless victim of society to being a wry, ironic observer of it—when he unexpectedly turns out to be not so much the butt of the joke as the practical joker himself.

It might seem that Brooks has just decided he must ultimately sacrifice the slapstick to the satire. But in truth I think it is a weakness in the social satire, not its strength, that interferes with the total effect of the film at these moments. The fact is that Brooks is letting us off easily, and by us I mean the audience for whom the film was made, the white middle-class audience with whom the film will have to make its nut. Out of consideration for our touchy sensibilities, Brooks shies away from any really acerbic visions of race relations. Bart takes whitey's abuse in stride as if the problem were for him to be tolerant of white society rather than vice versa. He can even manipulate the white man and avoid the consequences of his malice so handily, that malice need not be thought of as a legitimate problem anyway. Blazing Saddles is thus careful—too careful—not to offend us. Like All in the Family. Brooks' film makes our prejudices seem so apparent and inept that we might conclude they must be harmless as well. The trouble with Blazing Saddles is that it's a comedy not black enough.

In the end, however, it's the Hollywood parody that comes to the top and dominates both the social satire and the slapstick…. Brooks' zaniness, his instinct for incongruities, doesn't fail him here. These closing scenes all go in a dozen different directions at once. But somehow they are still not as funny as they ought to be considering all the energy they are expending.

Maybe Brooks himself has tried to go in too many different directions at once. He has not only tried to work on too many levels of consciousness at the same time, but has taken on too many jobs: actor, director, writer, producer, lyricist, etc. There are two separate roles in which Brooks appears as an actor…. And even when these characters are not on the screen, Brooks still seems to be there in the person of Bart. Bart's ambiguity, this too agile dexterity of his which allows him first to participate in a scene, then to stand aside and admire his handiwork, seems to reflect Brooks' own dilemma as director. Like Bart, Brooks has to juggle too many points of view for his own good. (pp. 61-2)