Foggy Melson | Mel Brooks Interview on "Life Stinks" (January 23, 1992) @foggymelson | Uploaded September 2023 | Updated October 2024, 15 hours ago.
Life Stinks is a 1991 American comedy film co-written, produced, directed by and starring Mel Brooks. It is one of the few Mel Brooks comedies that is not a parody, nor at any time does the film break the fourth wall.[2] It co-stars Lesley Ann Warren, Howard Morris and Jeffrey Tambor. The original music score was composed by John Morris. The film was both a critical and a box-office flop.
Production
Whoopi Goldberg was initially considered for Lesley Ann Warren's role; however, Brooks was uncertain whether he could convincingly play her love interest.[3] Sailor's funeral was inspired by an incident that happened when Howard Morris was scattering his father's ashes.
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 21% of 19 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.1/10.[7] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 54 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[8].
Roger Ebert called Life Stinks "a warmhearted new comedy", opining that while Brooks did an exemplary job of finding humor in the dismal subject matter, the film is much less comedy-focused than most of his films, taking a sensitive and poignant approach to its characters. He also highly praised Brooks' acting in the film, and concluded, "There is a certain tension in Life Stinks between the bull-headed optimism of the Brooks character, and the hopeless reality of the streets, and that’s what the movie is about."[9] Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle, in contrast, was unimpressed with the film's message, arguing that it is implausible that a man like Goddard Bolt would not succeed at life on the streets, and that the only places where the film succeeds are in its humorous moments rather than its attempts to convey a message. Summing up "The problem with Life Stinks is that it's got its heart in the right place but not a whole lot else," she gave it two out of five stars.
In a review of the 2015 Blu-Ray release, Matt Brunson of Creative Loafing Charlotte commented, "Mel Brooks strikes out with this sizable flop that's perhaps surpassed only by 1995's Dracula: Dead and Loving It as the auteur's worst." Citing the failed efforts at social satire and absence of Mel Brooks' usual collection of leads, he gave it one-and-a-half stars.[6]
Melvin James Brooks (né Kaminsky;[1] June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies.[2] A recipient of numerous accolades, he is one of 18 entertainers to win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award. He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and the Honorary Academy Award in 2023.
He began his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar's variety show Your Show of Shows from 1950 to 1954 alongside Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Larry Gelbart.[3] With Carl Reiner, he created the comic character The 2000 Year Old Man and together they released several comedy albums starting with 2000 Year Old Man in 1960. He created, with Buck Henry, the hit television comedy series Get Smart which ran from 1965 to 1970.
Brooks rose to prominence becoming one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s. His best-known films include The Producers (1967), The Twelve Chairs (1970), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).[4] A musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers, ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2007 and was itself remade into a musical film in 2005. He wrote and produced the Hulu series History of the World, Part II (2023).
Brooks was married to actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005. Their son Max Brooks is an actor and author, known for his novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006). In 2021, Mel Brooks published a memoir titled All About Me![5] Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of the past 100 years (1900–2000), all of which ranked in the top 15 of the list: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.[6]
Life Stinks is a 1991 American comedy film co-written, produced, directed by and starring Mel Brooks. It is one of the few Mel Brooks comedies that is not a parody, nor at any time does the film break the fourth wall.[2] It co-stars Lesley Ann Warren, Howard Morris and Jeffrey Tambor. The original music score was composed by John Morris. The film was both a critical and a box-office flop.
Production
Whoopi Goldberg was initially considered for Lesley Ann Warren's role; however, Brooks was uncertain whether he could convincingly play her love interest.[3] Sailor's funeral was inspired by an incident that happened when Howard Morris was scattering his father's ashes.
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 21% of 19 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.1/10.[7] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 54 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[8].
Roger Ebert called Life Stinks "a warmhearted new comedy", opining that while Brooks did an exemplary job of finding humor in the dismal subject matter, the film is much less comedy-focused than most of his films, taking a sensitive and poignant approach to its characters. He also highly praised Brooks' acting in the film, and concluded, "There is a certain tension in Life Stinks between the bull-headed optimism of the Brooks character, and the hopeless reality of the streets, and that’s what the movie is about."[9] Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle, in contrast, was unimpressed with the film's message, arguing that it is implausible that a man like Goddard Bolt would not succeed at life on the streets, and that the only places where the film succeeds are in its humorous moments rather than its attempts to convey a message. Summing up "The problem with Life Stinks is that it's got its heart in the right place but not a whole lot else," she gave it two out of five stars.
In a review of the 2015 Blu-Ray release, Matt Brunson of Creative Loafing Charlotte commented, "Mel Brooks strikes out with this sizable flop that's perhaps surpassed only by 1995's Dracula: Dead and Loving It as the auteur's worst." Citing the failed efforts at social satire and absence of Mel Brooks' usual collection of leads, he gave it one-and-a-half stars.[6]
Melvin James Brooks (né Kaminsky;[1] June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies.[2] A recipient of numerous accolades, he is one of 18 entertainers to win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award. He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and the Honorary Academy Award in 2023.
He began his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar's variety show Your Show of Shows from 1950 to 1954 alongside Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Larry Gelbart.[3] With Carl Reiner, he created the comic character The 2000 Year Old Man and together they released several comedy albums starting with 2000 Year Old Man in 1960. He created, with Buck Henry, the hit television comedy series Get Smart which ran from 1965 to 1970.
Brooks rose to prominence becoming one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s. His best-known films include The Producers (1967), The Twelve Chairs (1970), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).[4] A musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers, ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2007 and was itself remade into a musical film in 2005. He wrote and produced the Hulu series History of the World, Part II (2023).
Brooks was married to actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005. Their son Max Brooks is an actor and author, known for his novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006). In 2021, Mel Brooks published a memoir titled All About Me![5] Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of the past 100 years (1900–2000), all of which ranked in the top 15 of the list: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.[6]
