(Credits: Far Out / HBO)
Sun 11 January 2026 0:30, UK
Having found his greatest successes and written himself into the cinematic history books by satirising and spoofing cinema’s most notable genres, there are few people in the industry more qualified to pass judgment on the greatest mockumentary ever made than Mel Brooks.
The EGOT-winning legend made it his life’s work, graduating from the small screen to the silver one by poking fun at both musicals and the lingering spectre of World War II with The Producers, the feature-length directorial debut that won him an Academy Award for ‘Best Original Screenplay’.
It was the gift that kept on giving, with the writer, director, producer, and actor continuing to mock any form of cinema that he had an interest in. That was the grand design behind Brooks’ stellar string of spoofs; he wouldn’t make one just for the sake of it, because he needed skin in the game to do his best work.
He loved westerns, so we got Blazing Saddles. James Whale’s Frankenstein scared the shit out of him as a child, so we got Young Frankenstein. He adored silent films, so we got Silent Movie. He thought Alfred Hitchcock was the greatest director who ever lived, so we got High Anxiety. He enjoyed the post-Star Wars explosion in sci-fi, so we got Spaceballs, and on it goes.
By the time he returned to the genre he helped define in the 1960s and 1970s three decades later with Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It, mainstream comedy had changed, and Brooks began to feel like a man out of time. The former made money and became a cult favourite, but the latter was a critical and commercial dud that doubled as the last picture he ever helmed.
Spaceballs 2 will be the first Mel Brooks-style parody hailing from Mel Brooks in over 30 years when it releases in 2027, but he admitted there may have been a missed opportunity or two. Based on how effortlessly he satirised musicals, noir, westerns, and horror, the icon was asked why he’d never made a mockumentary, which seemed right up his street.
“I don’t know why I didn’t,” he pondered to IndieWire, before suggesting that there was one movie so good that no matter how hard he tried, he’d never be able to beat. “You know who did it brilliantly, and I guess, as a result, I stayed away from it? Rob Reiner, with This Is Spinal Tap. That movie’s brilliant. So he had ‘crazy documentary’ covered.”
Despite Reiner being the son of Brooks’ best friend of almost 70 years, Carl Reiner, there isn’t a whiff of second-hand nepotism about the veteran declaring This Is Spinal Tap as the cream of the mockumentary crop, because it’s a sentiment that cinephiles have been agreeing with since 1984.
Even if it’s not the greatest ever made, although it probably is, it’s still the most influential, with Reiner’s timeless tale of the obliviously idiotic band setting the template that the genre still follows to the letter more than four decades later.
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