I've seen a couple over the years: Robin Hood, Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, and most recently Spaceballs. I found them all funny, theoretically, but they rarely got an open laugh out of me. It seems like most of the time this is just because the comedic timing makes every joke or funny bit land very awkwardly, or with just a bit too much space to leave room for any subtlety or reward for the watcher.
I feel like I remember the few I saw as a kid being funnier at that time. Is it just because my brain has been attention-poisoned with the rapid fire wit of modern comedic television?
I grew up with Brooks and while I haven't watched any recently, the pace of movies were definitely slower back then.
Edit: thinking back, a lot of humor in those movies would almost break the fourth wall in that Jewish, "eh? Eh?" Sort of way.
"Breaking the 4th wall, but jewishly" is hilarious to me.
Lol, but you know what I mean.💁♂️
There definitely is a distinctive Jewish comedy culture, Yiddish speaking Jewish comedy is especially known for puns and clever wordplay. And going waaaay back I'm told that there are a lot of really gutbusting puns and referential jokes in the Torah that you can only understand if you can read it in Hebrew.
The Talmud and Midrash are also well know for clever humor, wordplay, gotcha jokes, and puns, all woven in to serious debate about the topic being discussed.
I agree about the pacing, which is strange to me, because I much prefer older movies for the most part because they're slower.I just watched Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice from 1969 and the pacing was absolutely fantastic. Modern cinematography is usually too quick for me and there's no room to let the actors really shine and do their thing, especially when you never have more than two of them in one shot for more than a few seconds. But when it comes to Mel Brooks specifically the dialogue just feels very clunky in its timing, and it gives every joke whiplash.
Definitely major fourth wall breaking with him though and I always gotta appreciate that.
Oh yeah, the Brooks comedies knocked the fourth wall down in the first few minutes. They're so genre-aware and so much winking and laughing along with the audience i can't think of any other good comparisons.
Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. That, "see what we did there? We've got jokes!" Kind of energy. He would often give the audience a second or two to figure out the joke before moving on.