The Twelve Chairs

Coming between The Producers and Blazing Saddles, The Twelve Chairs is a largely forgotten film in Mel Brooks' oeuvre. Certainly it isn't as strong as the two films that bracket it in his history, but it's an amiable, pleasing comedy that tickles the funny bone more than eliciting outright guffaws.

Adapted from a period Russian novel, and set in the newly formed Soviet Union of the 1920s, The Twelve Chairs is a mixture of traditional Jewish humor and and its Americanized version, best exemplified by Mad magazine parodies and Borscht Belt gags. Ron Moody stars as a former Russian nobleman, reduced to being a simple worker following the revolution. When his mother-in-law confesses on her deathbed that she sewed her jewels into one of a set of twelve dining room chairs, he is off on an odyssey across the country, from Siberia to Yalta, tracking them down. He is joined by a vagabond hustler, played by Frank Langella, and rivaled by an avaricious priest (Dom DeLuise).

The tenor of the piece is set by the opening song (written by Brooks) called "Hope For the Best, Expect the Worst." Brooks takes numerous jabs at the Soviet system, but nothing too pointed. There is plenty of broad slapstick, and Moody, who is best known for playing Fagin in Carol Reed's Oliver, is encouraged to go big at every turn. Langella, who seems young for the part, is nonetheless impressive.

Brooks appears in a small role as a drunk and former servant of Moody's, and there's a funny running gag about how he loved his former master, even when when he was beaten.