Two for the money

IT'S CALLED A moviecal, a movie based on a Broadway musical that was itself based on a movie. Sure, the concept is a skosh crass and cannibalistic, but Mel Brooks's bizarre, hilariously funny 1968 film couldn't have been better suited for the makeover – it's now a movie based on a musical based on a movie about a musical. Reprising their stage roles as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, schemers bent on bilking little old ladies by mounting the worst stage production of all time, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick have honed their shtick so well after so many live performances, you half expect theaters screening the film to go dark on Mondays so they can have a day off. Some of the songs may be a little lackluster (although the Führer's big number in Springtime for Hitler, "Heil Myself," is a standout), but this is about comic timing, not show tunes. Originally a sharp-witted burlesque of spaced-out hippies, pigeon-cuddling Nazis, and spats-sporting vaudevillians, The Producers is now a tongue-in-cheek nostalgia piece. But, thankfully, it's one with enough sense to ratchet up the fakeness and frivolity as far as it will go. Let's face it, Will Ferrell as a nutso Third Reich dandy in lederhosen may be wunderbar, but it's hardly the stuff of WW II docs. (Michelle Devereaux)