Live Life Team
Genre: Comedy
Director: Mel Brooks
Starring Cast: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks
The simple fact is that this is one of the funniest movies ever created. Rescued from a railroad mob, Black Bart is chosen by a shady speculator and a crooked Governor (Brooks plays both) to be sheriff of Rock Ridge.
Their expectation is that the locals will become so unreceptive and deflated that it will be easy to persuade them to sell their property and leave town. The plan is to build a money-spinning railroad through their land. Black Bart finds a surprising collaborator in the drunken, gunslinger marvel, Waco Kid, and the pair hatch a plan to hoodwink the land thieves and their henchmen by making a mock-up cardboard town. After many wild adventures, they travel off into the sunset …in a limousine.
In an age where Hollywood is continually seeking to create a new breed of black super-hero roles, with Blazing Saddles Mel Brooks established himself as just the opposite. He is more like the king of dubious taste, choosing a strangely mistaken formula with which to create a move. He would highlight Hollywood’s new black moral perception for what it really was while simultaneously sending up the Western genre. Black Bart, therefore quickly reveals that he is as inept as a sheriff as anything else.
Magnificently over-the-top scenes comprise the great bean-fart campfire, honky tonk singer Lilli Shtupp’s curious songs, and a jazz band performing the film’s soundtrack in the middle of the desert.
“Blazing Saddles” release was met with many critical scoffs, but those detractors disappeared once it became the world’s largest box office Western.
