{"id":425038,"date":"2026-01-23T13:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T13:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/425038\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T13:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T13:21:11","slug":"the-99-year-old-man-is-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/425038\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The 99-Year-Old Man!’ Is Kind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early in Judd Apatow<\/a> and Michael Bonfiglio\u2019s two-part HBO<\/a> documentary, \u201cMel Brooks<\/a>: The 99-Year-Old Man!,\u201d the titular man himself is seated for yet another interview, for yet another show, that\u2019s, yet again, wholly dependent on Brooks\u2019 talent, wit, and humor to entertain the masses. Apatow, perched opposite the near-centennial comedy legend and inquiring about his hundreds of previous sit-downs, asks if he had to create a public persona just to get through all that talking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did a lot of interviews,\u201d Brooks says. \u201cHalf of them were completely fake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think people know who you really are?\u201d Apatow asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Brooks says \u2014\u00a0and we\u2019re off. The documentary jumps back to his childhood in Brooklyn, when Brooks\u2019 father died before Mel was 3 years old. At 18, he was drafted into the Army to fight the Nazis (an experience he may have drawn from<\/a> in his screenwriting), but not before he studied stand-up comics in the Catskills, where he met Sid Caesar. Then it\u2019s \u201cYour Show of Shows,\u201d where Brooks bonded with Carl Reiner (and broke through with \u201cThe 2000-Year-Old-Man\u201d), one failed marriage during a fallow creative stretch, a hit TV<\/a> show (\u201cGet Smart\u201d), and blammo: \u201cThe Producers,\u201d<\/a> \u201cBlazing Saddles,\u201d<\/a> \u201cYoung Frankenstein\u201d \u2014 the hits rolled in.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a> \"Ha-Chan,<\/a> <\/p>\n

Despite his claim to a certain abstruseness, \u201cThe 99-Year-Old Man!\u201d operates as if the audience does know Brooks, and well. Hitting career highlight after career highlight with limited introspection in between, co-directors Apatow and Bonfiglio craft a fine testimonial to a titan of comedy, albeit one without many surprises. <\/p>\n

Instead, the three-and-a-half-hour doc leans into a kind of cumulative intimacy: Much of \u201cThe 99-Year-Old Man!\u201d chronicles Brooks\u2019 \u201cgreat stories,\u201d as Apatow calls them, by stitching each one together across multiple archival interviews: Brooks will start recounting the time he met Cary Grant to Johnny Carson, then continue on a different talk show before delivering the punchline to a third interviewer. His narrative is seamless, which emphasizes Brooks\u2019 storytelling expertise, but each montage also works as a means to verify the truth staring us straight in the face: Brooks is an incredible talent and a lovely human being.<\/p>\n

Initially, it\u2019s hard to quell the knee-jerk reaction: \u201cNo duh!\u201d But the film\u2019s point is rarely as simple as, \u201cRemember that?\u201d It\u2019s closer to, \u201cWill you look at that \u2014\u00a0will you look at him.\u201d Apatow and Bonfiglio are in awe, not only of Brooks\u2019 artistry, but of his character. And through their dedication to capturing a life well-lived, soon enough, you are, too. <\/p>\n

Loads of footage commemorating Brooks\u2019 marriage with Anne Bancroft magnifies those tender feelings. \u201cThe 99-Year-Old Man!\u201d goes out of its way to foreground their equally enamored partnership, with Bancroft describing her heart jumping every time she heard her husband\u2019s key slide into their front door, and Brooks remembering how he took every opportunity to spend even more time with his wife outside of the house. Their seemingly impromptu duets on live TV are about as sweet as anything in the doc, and there\u2019s plenty of warmth to curl up with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the hard part about living that long,\u201d Samantha Brooks, Mel\u2019s granddaughter says. \u201cHe\u2019s lost so many friends.\u201d To that end, two of Apatow\u2019s interview subjects died in the time between recording and release, including David Lynch, who shares a heartfelt account of Brooks hiring him for \u201cThe Elephant Man.\u201d At the time, Lynch was worried a beloved, blockbuster comedian like Brooks wouldn\u2019t connect with his sole directorial feature, \u201cEraserhead.\u201d But he did, and Lynch never forgot it.<\/p>\n

\"MelMel Brooks in \u2018The 99-Year-Old Man!\u2019Courtesy of HBO<\/p>\n

\u201cMel is a smart fellow,\u201d Lynch says. \u201cHe knows about human nature so much. He\u2019s got a lot going on in that mind of his. It\u2019s really busy, and he sees so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

He feels it, too. If Bancroft was the love of Brooks\u2019 life, then Carl Reiner was his best friend, and losing them both \u2014\u00a015 years apart\u00a0\u2014\u00a0would be enough to topple a lesser man, as well as his documentary. In Part 2, Apatow sits down with Rob Reiner, who tells him that Brooks kept coming over to Carl\u2019s house \u201cfor months and months\u201d after his passing \u2014 a loss Brooks was there to witness first-hand. When Apatow asks about those final moments together, Brooks says he shouted at the medics \u201cfor an hour,\u201d hoping they could bring Carl back.<\/p>\n

Both stories, Rob\u2019s and Mel\u2019s, evoke an acute sorrow \u2014\u00a0a lonesome man desperate to spend a few more seconds with his friend, even in his memories \u2014 but Brooks and \u201cThe 99-Year-Old Man!\u201d earn their exclamation mark by refusing to wallow.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t indulge yourself in being incredibly unhappy and miserable because it doesn\u2019t make the pain go away, or better,\u201d Brooks says. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to pay God or the world or spirits for losing somebody great. You don\u2019t have to pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a sentiment shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone who can sense where Brooks\u2019 comedy comes from: the respect he has for his audience, the antipathy he feels for oppressors, and the playfulness with which he approaches every subject. Turning our implicit appreciation into explicit recognition, \u201cThe 99-Year-Old Man!\u201d makes sure to regularly surface great jokes crafted by its habitual humorist, and it even carves out a section on the power comedy possesses as a tool for dismantling tyranny (with assists from Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O\u2019Brien, and\u2026 Josh Gad<\/a>? Sure!). <\/p>\n

The man himself, it\u2019s clear, wants to be remembered as more than just a funnyman. He\u2019s a screenwriter and a songwriter, an actor and a director, a comedian and a dramatist. It\u2019s obvious he savors a good laugh more than anything, but that doesn\u2019t mean he can or should be reduced to his favorite thing. We may know Mel Brooks<\/a> as well as we can know anyone who lives, for us, primarily on screens. But \u201cThe 99-Year-Old Man!\u201d is a good reminder that when it comes to kind and talented people, there\u2019s always more to see.<\/p>\n

Grade: B<\/p>\n

\u201cMel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man!\u201d premieres Thursday, January 22 on HBO and HBO Max. On HBO, Part 1 airs Thursday at 8 p.m. ET, followed by Part 2 on Friday at the same time. Both parts will be available Thursday on HBO Max.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early in Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio\u2019s two-part HBO documentary, \u201cMel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man!,\u201d the titular man…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,1035,133856,83980,900,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-425038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-hbo","10":"tag-judd-apatow","11":"tag-mel-brooks","12":"tag-reviews","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}