It's amazing, looking back, just how much variety this succinct satire of the western genre is able to put on display. Crammed full of every type of joke, pun and ruse imaginable, it's the perfect vehicle for an in-his-prime Mel Brooks to show off his devastatingly effective abilities in each style. More impressively, it's able to make those wild leaps from pointed, hilarious dialog to silly sight gags to dense, dark satire without disrupting the flow of the story and becoming an undisciplined series of loosely-related skits (though it does come awfully close once or twice).
That it can also be so funny amidst a subject matter so heavy, (Brooks tackles racism and government corruption amidst the obvious parodies of an overpopulated genre) is further testament to his talents. I'm not a huge fan of the bizarre non-sequitur ending sequence, but given the non-stop laughs that precede, it's a small price to pay.
Shout by drqshadowBlockedParent2020-02-06T15:17:37Z
It's amazing, looking back, just how much variety this succinct satire of the western genre is able to put on display. Crammed full of every type of joke, pun and ruse imaginable, it's the perfect vehicle for an in-his-prime Mel Brooks to show off his devastatingly effective abilities in each style. More impressively, it's able to make those wild leaps from pointed, hilarious dialog to silly sight gags to dense, dark satire without disrupting the flow of the story and becoming an undisciplined series of loosely-related skits (though it does come awfully close once or twice).
That it can also be so funny amidst a subject matter so heavy, (Brooks tackles racism and government corruption amidst the obvious parodies of an overpopulated genre) is further testament to his talents. I'm not a huge fan of the bizarre non-sequitur ending sequence, but given the non-stop laughs that precede, it's a small price to pay.