{"id":250553,"date":"2026-01-21T21:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T21:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/250553\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T21:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T21:19:07","slug":"mel-brooks-the-99-year-old-man-review-judd-apatows-hbo-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/250553\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!’ Review: Judd Apatow’s HBO Doc"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMel Brooks<\/a>: The 99 Year Old Man! is the third and, thus far, best of Judd Apatow<\/a> and Mike Bonfiglio<\/a>\u2018s multi-part HBO documentaries about legendary comics.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs excellent and insightful as The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling<\/a> and George Carlin\u2019s American Dream <\/a>were, the filmmakers began chronicling their subjects posthumously, requiring extra effort to bring Shandling and Carlin\u2019s respective voices to the screen in addition to their ample professional outputs.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tAs funny as you\u2019re expecting, but wildly emotional, too.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAirdate:\u00a08 p.m. Thursday, January 22, and Friday, January 23 (HBO)
Directors:\u00a0Judd Apatow and Mike Bonfiglio\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWith The 99 Year Old Man!, Apatow and Bonfiglio \u2014 though only Apatow appears on-camera himself \u2014 are able to sit down with Mel Brooks, putting one of the best storytellers of his or any era in the spotlight, not for the first time and hopefully not for the last.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrooks, still reflective and funny at 99, is a powerful presence, but the documentary\u2019s gut punch comes as much from the people who have been so integral to his life who are no longer with us \u2014 from figures like Carl and Rob Reiner, who both sat for interviews, to indispensable loved ones including Norman Lear and the essential Anne Bancroft, whose absence is felt even if they\u2019re present in ample archival footage.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! is funny and well-sourced and thoughtfully composed isn\u2019t surprising, but the emotional potency perhaps is. You\u2019ll laugh at this two-part, nearly four-hour film; it\u2019s also hard to avoid tears at multiple points, especially in the second part.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd why would you want to avoid? How many of us have laughed until we cried at Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein<\/a> or even Spaceballs<\/a>? This feels like an extension of that mirth, a summation of a life of tremendous achievement in which friendships and a 40-plus-year marriage might be more significant than all the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tonys.<\/p>\n

\n\tAllowing Brooks to steer the documentary, Apatow and Bonfiglio are able to stick to a fairly strict chronology.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first part goes from Brooks\u2019 birth in Brooklyn in 1926 \u2014 the documentary\u2019s title will, knock on wood, become outdated on June 28 \u2014 to his service in World War II, his Borscht Belt roots and his early collaborations with Sid Caesar. It covers that indelible early partnership with Carl Reiner and his push into filmmaking with The Producers<\/a> up to Blazing Saddles<\/a>. This chapter includes his first marriage and then the early days of his relationship with Bancroft.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second part traces Brooks\u2019 career from Young Frankenstein \u2014 yes, Brooks\u2019 unparalleled 1974 is split in two \u2014 to the present day, when he\u2019s going through what son Max describes as the fourth or fifth waves of his fame, with the return of Spaceballs<\/a>, The History of the World<\/a> and possibly, if the FX series moves forward, Young Frankenstein<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein probably get the most time and depth, the filmmakers make sure to touch, at least briefly, on most of Brooks\u2019 credits, including films that were considered disappointments at the time and perhaps still are. That means that The Twelve Chairs, Silent Movie, Life Stinks and Robin Hood: Men in Tights get proper discussion. Only fans of Dracula: Dead and Loving It \u2014 I\u2019m sure they exist somewhere \u2014 are likely to be disappointed.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmple, or at least near-ample, time is given to Brooksfilms, the production company that brought The Elephant Man, Frances, My Favorite Year and The Fly to the screen; ditto the decorated Broadway musical adaptation of The Producers. Only fans of the musical stage version of Young Frankenstein \u2014 I\u2019m less convinced they exist \u2014 are likely to be disappointed.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is some dryness to the first hour of the documentary, which is mostly biographical background, delivered by Brooks, who traces the origins of his sense of humor, as well as the early adversity he faced as a low-paid writer on Caesar\u2019s Your Show of Shows. Brooks and his three children with Florence Baum, two appearing on-camera and one via audio, aren\u2019t hesitant to discuss his bouts with depression and the reasons that first marriage failed.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe documentary hits a high gear when Brooks connects first with Carl Reiner and then, nearly a decade later, with Bancroft. The tracing of those two key relationships provides the heart of the documentary \u2014 especially the apparently countless appearances, both talk shows and filmed public events, at which Brooks either discussed those relationships or Reiner and Bancroft joined him. As unavoidably sad as it is to imagine Brooks\u2019 sense of loss no longer having Bancroft or both Reiners, the doc is far more infused with the joy that came from their interactions over many decades. It\u2019s a love letter to the relationships that you have if you\u2019ve lived a good 99 years.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Brooks is, as I said, about as sharp as one could dream to be at 99, he\u2019s still 99; the stories, while recounted with cleverness and alacrity, don\u2019t have quite the animation and physicality that they once did. The directors approach this minor limitation by using those copious Brooks appearances from the \u201960s, \u201970s and \u201980s almost in conversation with the current version.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe best stories are the ones that Brooks has told the most frequently, and there\u2019s pleasure in watching Brooks at different ages telling different parts of those familiar tales, with different voices and different details arising in each era and each venue and each host with whom he\u2019s speaking. Even better are the couples stories we\u2019re able to hear through a he said\/she said of Brooks and Bancroft over the years.<\/p>\n

\n\tIs the 99-year-old Brooks remembering the actual events or remembering the stories as he loved to tell them? There\u2019s something very sentimental in the blurring of that line.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Brooks\u2019 collaborators aren\u2019t available to be interviewed, the directors have a solid repository of archival interviews with Gene Wilder and Blazing Saddles co-writer Richard Pryor. And as the movies and projects become more recent, we\u2019re able to get new interviews with the likes of Cary Elwes, Daphne Zuniga, Dave Chappelle and the Broadway duo of Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. Dick Cavett talks about the beer commercial he and Brooks recorded together and Jerry Seinfeld remembers the pleasure of witnessing Brooks and Carl Reiner\u2019s nightly dinner ritual for an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen there are just a few of the countless comics inspired by Brooks and company, whether it\u2019s Sarah Silverman and Adam Sandler sharing the pride they felt in Brooks\u2019 Jewishness, to people like Ben Stiller, Nick Kroll, Robert Townsend, Jerry and David Zucker, Peter Farrelly and more talking about what they learned from experiencing Brooks\u2019 films. Oh and yes, David Lynch is here talking about the doors Brooks opened for him by picking the Eraserhead auteur to direct The Elephant Man.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe documentary captures what was political about Brooks\u2019 work, what was boundary-breaking, what you couldn\u2019t do today and what type of insight and sensitivity might allow one to do something comparably audacious.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut it\u2019s the friendship with Carl Reiner and the marriage to Anne Bancroft that linger. The documentary was always going to be amusing, but it didn\u2019t need to be quite so lovely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! is the third and, thus far, best of Judd Apatow and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[133686,146,85,46,63525,63527,133687,133688,133689,133690,411,133691],"class_list":{"0":"post-250553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-blazing-saddles","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-judd-apatow","13":"tag-mel-brooks","14":"tag-mel-brooks-the-99-year-old-man","15":"tag-mike-bonfiglio","16":"tag-spaceballs","17":"tag-the-producers","18":"tag-tv","19":"tag-young-frankenstein"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}