Film review: The Moon's Our Home (1936)

Another one I ordered after watching Margaret Sullavan in The Good Fairy.  It's a screwball comedy-romance, a notch below the classics but good nonetheless, with dialogue by Dorothy Parker, so not too shabby.  Spice is added by the fact that the two leads had already been married and divorced by the time this was made.  Sullavan plays Hollywood starlet "Cherry Chester" (really Sarah Brown), whom we see terrorizing her staff in her LA mansion as the film begins.  

She is getting insistent offers of marriage from an Egyptian royal and is thinking of taking him up, until a terrified servant hands her a telegram informing her that her tony East-Coast Grandmother is deathly sick, and she flies out of the house trailed only by all the servants who have had to pack her bags.  Once aboard the train she finds to her chagrin that she is not the only celebrity that the crowds of press and fans are gathering to see off.  The other one is famous writer of adventurous travelogues "Anthony Amberton" (in reality John Smith), who is of course played by Henry Fonda, acting a good deal less inert and clueless than in his classic screwball outing The Lady Eve.  He is informed that not all of the fuss (which he hates) is about him, and, on finding out Cherry Chester ("is that some kind of soft drink?") is aboard, launches into a screed about Hollywood actors.  Despite being in adjacent cabins on the train, the two manage not to meet, however.  

(Jami swears this is the earliest film in which the leading lady does something so undignified as brushing her teeth and gargling, but I don't think so.  Perhaps you, dear reader, can settle this.) On reaching New York, she goes to her Granny's (palatial) house to discover, of course, that her Granny, who is clearly the source of her entitled behavior, is fine, but wanted her back because she got wind of the Egyptian and wanted her to drop this acting nonsense and marry her cousin Horace.  Meanwhile, he is in New York to promote his latest work, which involves book signings, which, of course, he hates. There's various shenanigans where we meet Horace (who is twelve years older than Sarah and sort of a dimmer version of an American Bertie Wooster) and we see a battle of wills between Sarah and her grandmother, and we also discover that John is deathly allergic to "Cherry's" signature perfume ("Cherry Blossom," natch) because of an incident involving musk in an African village, or so he claims.  While he is getting some fresh air outside the store where he was both book-signing and exposed to the perfume, 

he is spotted by a hoard of his (rabid female) fans who chase him down the street.  He escapes by hopping through traffic, of course ending up in the carriage (her Grandmother's staff are very old-fashioned) of Sarah.  

She is shocked to find that he doesn't recognize her, and he equally so, and they both talk about how they long to escape New York and all these people to the wilderness.  He leaves suddenly (he remembers an appointment) but leaves behind a card of the boarding house off in the wilds of New England, which gives her the idea to escape both her Grandmother and her marriage plans and her exhausting Hollywood lifestyle.  And so she does, expecting to surprise him, but rather disgruntled to discover that he expected her.  Still, they spend an idyllic few days in a snow-bound little B&B run by Margaret "Wicked Witch" Hamilton and her husband, and with Walter "stereotypical Old Prospector" Brennan as the coachman.  In fact, it is so idyllic that they get married on a whim, but on the wedding night John is exposed to her perfume and his reaction so enrages her that she departs back to New York, and is soon engaged to be married to Horace.  Will John track her down?  Will they ever work out that the other is as famous as they are?  Will the finale involve John practically abducting Sarah, complete with straitjacket?  Watch it and see (but you'll have to buy the DVD because it's not streaming anywhere, as far as I can see).

Jami remarked that this wouldn't have worked with any other actress, and there's something in that.  "Cherry" certainly acts like a spoiled brat, and it's only Sullavan's ease in switching between aggrieved and breezy that prevents one souring on her.  In fact, truth be told, I don't hold up much hope for the marriage, as both of them are fairly insufferable, and perhaps that's the Dorothy Parker influence.  Still, both are charming, and the supporting characters are all reliable veterans who make the film breeze past very satisfyingly.

 

Film review: Cry 'Havoc' (1943)

If you look this film up, it mostly says "covers the same story as the superior So Proudly We Hail!" which stars Claudette Colbert, Paulette Godard and Veronica Lake.  Well, I don't care, I liked this one a lot.  It's based on a play which was based on an actual story of nurses on Bataan as the Japanese close in (in 1942).  So the film was made as the women involved were [SPOILER ALERT] still in Japanese prisoner of war camps, and the outcome of the war very much in doubt.  This means that the film is pretty downbeat and surprisingly gritty, especially as it's an almost entirely female cast (one thing it's got over SPWH, which seems to have a mostly male cast after the three stars).  I ordered the DVD after being impressed with Margaret Sullavan 

in The Good Fairy, and finding this one listed among her films, and co-starring our pre-code fave, Joan Blondell, here playing a "burlesque dancer" (i.e., stripper) who has to escape the Philippines and volunteers as a nurse.  In fact, that's one of the features that critics of this film cite the other as being superior: the real events feature a group of army nurses, while in this one, only Sullavan's Lieutenant Smith and her loyal assistant Flo (Marsha Hunt) are real army nurses and the rest of her crew are civilians who've had the minimum of first aid training who are recruited on the spot from refugees because they're running out of nurses.  This allows a colorful cast of characters: Smith's beloved-by-Flo but somewhat tightly wound Smith, Blondell's stripper Grace, Ella Raines' posh fashion-writer Connie,

local Filipina Luisita, 

humorously ditzy Mississippian Nydia (who has some of the funniest lines in the movie), 

young sisters, both students, Sue and Andra, 

and most of all, Ann Sothern's belligerent itinerant blue-collar worker Pat, who instantly takes against Smitty because, she says, she hates taking orders from a dame.  She also instantly falls for Lieutenant Holt, who would be the main male character in the film, except that he is never seen.  He's a bit like Norm's wife in Cheers or Niles's wife in Frasier, in that we never see him, we just hear a couple of words from him as people go into his office.  Pat pursues him incessantly, unaware that he and Smitty are an item, in fact [SPOILER ALERT] they are married, something Smith can't ever admit because it's not allowed in the forces.  Meanwhile, the new recruits are quickly settled in, and the first night they arrive, the hospital is bombed, and they're introduced to mayhem pretty quickly.  Most affected are Connie, who is obviously terrified, and whom Pat initially seems annoyed by (Pat is frankly a bit of a jerk), and the two sisters.  The first night, before the bombing starts, younger sister Sue (having just given an impassioned (and rather over-the-top - a reminder that part of the function of this film was to rally support for the ongoing war effort) speech about the point of this war being life itself, making it a simple war) goes out for air and disappears.  She is found days later having been buried under a pile of corpses the whole time, and essentially has lost her marbles.  Meanwhile, the soldiers never stop coming, and Grace is grabbed by one who says that nobody will tell him how he's doing or if he's going to make it (Grace makes eye contact with the doctor behind him who shakes his head) and she has to listen to his speech about how he's done more than he ever dreamed of anyway, including having a honeymoon (for all of two days)).  Connie gets to hold a soldier (after the second time the hospital is bombed, this time to smithereens) who says "I'm all right." and then dies in her arms.  (The actor?  Robert Mitchum!)  This incident puts some steel into Connie's soul, so that later, when Smitty tells them all that there's no hope and the Japanese will overrun them in a matter of days, and they have a chance to evacuate if they go the next morning, everyone decides to stay.  Alas, this decision is to prove fatal for Connie.  Meanwhile, Grace gets shrapnel in the leg and we also discover that Smitty has "malignant malaria" which essentially means it's chronic and keeps recurring until it will eventually kill her, and meanwhile they've basically run out of Quinine (as well as food - they eat hash made of monkeys and horses).  This sounds like relentless misery (leading to a very downbeat ending - remember what I said at the beginning), but it somehow isn't - it's completely gripping.  

And having just complained (see Grand Hotel) about "stagey" films, this one manages to be based on a play and largely about the interplay of a lot of characters in a very limited range of locations without feeling claustrophobic.  Partly this is because of some excellent seeming-location scenes, including one where an enemy fighter is shot down just yards away by (as we later discover) Andra!  Sadly, one other person who bites it is Lieutenant Holt, and it's only while mourning him that Pat discovers the truth of his marriage, and admits to Smitty that it was entirely one way and she never got anywhere with him.  This is as they are the last two leaving their underground quarters to go up to the sound of their Japanese captors (who, in keeping with the treatment of Holt, we never see).  I'm not a big fan of war movies - they so often come off as fake or falsely triumphalist, and while this one has a fair amount of hokum (some of the music is over-the-top, the Pat-Smitty-Holt love triangle is contrived), this one got to me.  I think part of it is that, as with M*A*S*H, you only ever see the effects of fighting, you never see actual fighting, and (apart from Andra shooting down a plane) none of our characters ever fires a shot.  And it's downbeat (especially the heartbreaking scene where two of the nurses go through piles and piles of dead soldiers' effects, making note of what they had (one soldier has a marble, presumably given him by one of his kids, and a "lucky" rabbit's foot)) - it ends in defeat, with victory very much in doubt.  And finally, of course, everyone in it is good, including minor characters like Smitty's commanding officer Captain Marsh, and Sadie, the cook who keeps them alive with the scraps that are left in the stores when their supply lines keep getting cut.  Ann Sothern was a revelation, though (you hate her at first, but she wins you over), 

so we may have to check out the Maisie films. SPWH would have to be very good indeed to be "obviously superior" to this one.  And I suspect it will certainly lack two strengths of this one: the almost entirely female main cast, and the ethnic diversity (and large representation of Filipino actors) of the soldiers they're treating, both pretty progressive for 1943, I think.  Also no Robert Mitchum!

Film review: Grand Hotel (1932)

Marlene Dietrich was at one point known as Paramount's answer to MGM's Greta Garbo, and Shanghai Express was also referred to as "Grand Hotel on wheels," so we thought we might follow up on a long-held ambition to watch this one.  And I must say that those nameless known as-ers and referrers were full of it.  First, this is nothing like Shanghai Express (except to the extent that each is star-packed (by the standards of popularity of the actors each studio had under contract), with each character having their own little storyline), and second, although both are glamorous with thick accents, Garbo is a much better actor than Dietrich, who is more a movie star in the way that Arnold Schwarzenegger is - by sheer force of personality.  Garbo, while top billed in this one, isn't really the main focus.  If anyone is, it is John Barrymore, who plays the penniless unlucky gambler Baron Felix von Geigern, and, although (or perhaps because) he was reputed to be the greatest actor of his generation, he's the least showy of all the actors on screen.  Perhaps most showy (and, to be honest, a little annoying) is his brother Lionel, who plays dying prole Otto Kringelein, who, knowing he is dying, is determined to live a little, and has cashed in all his savings to enjoy his remaining time at this, the fanciest hotel in Berlin.  Also chewing the scenery is Wallace Beery, who plays Kringelein's hated boss (in the garment industry) Preysing, who appears decent, or at least honest enough at the beginning of the film, calling home to his wife and children, vowing not to bargain dishonestly for the big contract he has to land to keep the business afloat, but is a thoroughly fallen man at the end.  He always was someone with an inflated sense of self-worth, though, despite only marrying into money and his position, and being (as accountant Kringelein reveals, a pretty inept manager), and it's fitting that Beery plays him, as he himself was widely loathed in the profession.  Beery seems to be the only one affecting a German accent (he does it rather well, I thought) - neither of the Barrymores venture one, despite all playing Germans.  Garbo is playing a Russian, famous dancer Grusinskaya (whom her dance director calls "Gru," which is very incongruous (no pun intended) for those of us who have had to sit through multiple showings of Despicable Me and its sequels), but I'm not sure if she's going for a Russian accent or whether that's her actual Swedish one.  At any rate, she is also putting on a show, but it's appropriate, as the dancer is herself very melodramatic.  This is the film (or at least, one of them) in which Garbo actually says "I want to be alone" as well as complaining of being tired, in a way that reminded Jami of Lili von Shtupp (although we've already decided she's based on Dietrich in Destry Rides Again).  It seems she has lost all confidence in herself and is performing inadequately before rapidly dwindling audiences.  She falls so low that she ducks out of an evening's performance, and on finding out that the audience did not miss her, because her understudy is now at least as good, prepares to kill herself, before being stopped by the Baron, who is hiding in her room having stolen her pearls.  

This precipitates a love between them (to the amazement of both), a renewed self-confidence (leading to an ecstatic audience) in her, and a fiscal crisis in him, as the pearls were to pay of debts he has to a thuggish bookie who keeps hanging around (or more probably his henchman, because he's dressed as a chauffeur).  And we still haven't mentioned the very young Joan Crawford, who is alternatively coquettish, militant and poignant as independent minded but pragmatic stenographer Ms. Flaem, which is pronounced "Phlegm," so maybe it's no surprise she prefers to be known as Flaemmchen.  She also (and first) falls hard for the Baron, 

but has to work for the odious Preysing, 

who is very quickly forgetting his wife and kids and planning an extended trip to London with her as his secretary before tragedy strikes.  One expects tragedy to strike Kringelein, as he keeps passing out, but the dissipated Dr. Otternschlag, who is a longtime resident who keeps checking for messages that never come and half whose face is horribly marked by a grenade from WWI (and whose commentary that "nothing ever happens at the Grand Hotel," that is obviously ironic both opens and closes the film) assures all that it is just from the chilled champagne that Kringelein is sampling for the first time.  (He's also partial to something called a "Louisiana Flip," and, when the Baron introduces him to gambling, 

it emerges he has a real knack for it - unlike the Baron.)  In fact, Kringelein's life is probably peaking at the end of the film, while one character is already dead, and another has not yet learned of the tragedy that will undercut their life.  But at least the wife of Senf, the head porter, has finally safely given birth.

If we're going to compare this one with Shanghai Express some more, I must confess I preferred that one, whereas Jami seems to have liked this one better.  I attribute that to her German-Russian heritage and proclivities, as it's obviously based on a German play, and has a definite heavy-handed Message about Life.  Shanghai, on the other hand, is pure escapism, and that's what I go to the movies for.  This one also seems very stage-bound.  The sets are pretty amazing, 

but we never leave the Hotel, which feels claustrophobic to me, and some of the speeches - especially Kringelein's - drag on rather, even if we are glad when he finally gives Preysing a piece of his mind.  It does seem that there are a lot of adaptations of European plays in the Hollywood films of the 30s (see: The Good Fairy), but this one in particular seems to want to disguise its limited location with sheer star power.  And that the film certainly has is spades.

Film review: Shanghai Express (1932)

 

As usual, we watched this because it was on the Criterion Channel.  They've added a collection of Dietrich/Von Sternberg collaborations, and this looked the most interesting (partly because it had Anna May Wong in it as well), and it certainly was.  As Jami commented, it feels a lot like an Agatha Christie, because it has a slew of colorful characters forced into companionship on a train from "Peiping" (Beijing) to Shanghai during the Chinese Civil War.  There's "Shanghai Lily" (Dietrich) 

who is a famous "coaster," according to a soldier at the beginning, which means a woman who goes up and down the coast essentially acquiring and dumping sugar daddies.  There's Hui Fei (Wong), 

also a woman of ill repute, albeit an actual local.  Alongside stoic English Army Doctor Captain Donald Harvey, there's the mysterious Henry Chang (Warner "Charlie Chan" Oland), who, as fat croaky-voiced American Sam Salt (Eugene Pallette, who seems to be in just about every film of this period, most famously as Friar Tuck in Robin Hood) seems both white and Chinese (and claims to have one parent each), priggish Reverend Mr. Carmichael, fussy Northern English Shanghai Boarding House owner Mrs. Haggerty (who is the first person we see, buying a ticket for the train, 

and who tries to smuggle her little dog aboard, only to have him taken away and stowed in the baggage compartment), non-speaking Frenchman Major Lenard (who keeps trying to converse with Salt, who is convinced that the perfectly innocent French he hears is a stream of insults - plus ca change), and whiny German hypochondriac Herr Baum.  All of them have secrets of varying degrees of importance (Major Lenard was drummed out of the military in disgrace, but insists on wearing his uniform on his trip to visit his sister because he doesn't want her to know, Baum is a huge opium smuggler), most importantly, as it transpires, Mr. Chang.  As the train gets going (delayed slightly by a cow on the tracks) we quickly discover that Donald and Lily were lovers five years earlier, but he left her because he thought she'd been unfaithful, and has been pining for her ever since.  But she only meant to test him, and has also loved him the whole time she's been "coasting".  But we don't get very far before the train is stopped by the Government armed forces and everyone's papers are checked, before they haul off a Chinese man and the passengers are herded back on board.  Mr. Chang, however, takes a detour to the telegraph office, and we soon find that he has sent orders ahead to have the train stopped and taken over, for it transpires he is a major rebel leader.  He then sets up office in a hall in the village the train is stopped in and examines each passenger in turn to find out if they can be ransomed in return for the man who was taken by the Government forces, who was his vital right hand man.  (This is where the secrets come out.)  He settles on Donald, because he's on his way to operate on a major government bigwig in Shanghai, who will be paralyzed without his help.  He also decides he'd like Lily for himself, 

but Donald decks him and Lily is allowed to go.  (However, to her great shame Hui Fei is taken in her place and suffers a fate worse than death.) Back on the (immobile) train with all the other passengers, Lily is crazed with worry, but (oddly) takes the advice of the (suddenly not such a huge prick as he had been) reverend and prays for Donald.  Anyway, Chang's scheme works, and another train brings back Chang's right hand man, 

along with a British Army officer to take charge of the Shanghai Express.  But wait, the Rebel leader is handed over, but where is Donald?  Lily goes to investigate and Chang tells her that the only stipulation was that he be returned alive, but it didn't say that he should still have his sight, and he must be punished for striking him.  Desperate, Lily agrees to go with Chang after all if he'll let Donald go.  It's a deal! And when Donald spots Lily's luggage being taken off the train and goes back to investigate, she tells him she's going willingly and he is about to storm off in a huff when Hui Fei returns for revenge on her molester... Back on the train, Donald is still convinced that Lily had ditched him for Chang (what a maroon), until the (suddenly a pillar of empathy and human kindness) reverend, who has winkled out of Lily what she really did, tells him he's an ass and starts the thaw.

So, not exactly an Agatha Christie plot (no mystery), but an exciting little number nonetheless.  But the real strength of the film is the sumptuous visuals.  Von Sternberg had clearly made it his mission to turn Dietrich into a screen icon and lights every frame like a Renaissance painting, with inky blacks and stark whites.  You could make a poster out of practically every frame that she's in.  

And then there are the sets, both outside and inside the train.  It really looks like China, with dozens of obviously real Chinese extras crowding every frame, and the train chugging slowly along tracks with high houses on either sides. (There's an amazing shot of soldiers sitting on top of the train who use their bayonets to steal food from baskets in the market they pass by).  Meanwhile, inside the train it makes you long to be able to take a ride on it - 

until it gets stopped by heavily armed men, that is. This film cries out to be seen on a big screen.  Dietrich herself isn't what you'd call a great actress, but she's certainly a commanding presence.  Her romantic counterpart, Clive Brook, has a wonderfully silky delivery, but is also a bit stiff, and they just don't make a plausible couple.  Also the reverend, as mentioned, undergoes a remarkable change about halfway through.  (He was awful up to that point - refusing even to sit in the same carriage as Hui Fei because he "knew what kind of woman she was".)  Apparently (according to IMDb) they were forced to make the reverend's character less odious for fear of offending the godly.  (I also don't buy Lily's praying, although Jami is less skeptical.)  But Oland makes a menacing baddie (quite unlike Charlie Chan - and because he's supposedly mixed race, it's not so insulting that he's actually white), and Anna May Wong does a lot with a little, and Sam Salt and Mrs. Haggerty are diverting comic relief.  Check it out!

Film review: A Day at the Races (1937)

 Criterion Channel has just added a bunch of Marx Bros. movies.  We already own the early Paramount ones (1929's Cocoanuts up to 1933's Duck Soup, widely regarded as their masterpiece (despite being the only one to cut out Chico's piano and Harpo's harp performances)) so we've (re-) watched the MGM ones which Queen named albums after, A Night at the Opera (1935) (the one with everyone crowding into a tiny ship's cabin, and the three brothers pretending to be famous bearded aviators - I'd already seen that before), and this one, which must be the longest they ever made, at nearly 2 hours.  Verdict: it's good!  I guess I had become convinced that everything went to shit fairly quickly after the initial glory years of the Paramount films, but both the MGM ones hold up, and might even rank above one or two of the Paramounts.  They are definitely slicker, and the brothers seem less unstoppable forces of dangerous anarchy and more like lovable characters, and in this one in particular, there are fairly long stretches where not a single one of them is on screen (what is the point of a Marx Bros. film without a Marx Bro.?), but the interplay is as strong as ever, and (very importantly) the magnificent Margaret Dumont, who is not in all the Paramounts, is in fine fettle in both these.  (According to Wikipedia, in a 1969 Dick Cavett interview, Groucho said that these two, both produced with famous MGM talent scout Irving Thalberg were the best the Marxes ever made.  Sadly Thalberg died just after filming started on Day, and the Marxes left MGM despite Opera and Day being hits.)  Anyway, about Day at the Races.  It's set at the "Standish Sanitorium" in Florida, owned by the young and pretty Judy Standish (Maureen "Jane in the Tarzan films" O'Sullivan) who inherited it from her father, and whose richest patient is the rich Mrs. Emily Upjohn (Margaret Dumont, naturally) but which is otherwise struggling for clients (the film opens with Chico waiting with the free shuttle bus to the Sanitorium at the train station and finding that nobody wants to go there - they're all on the way to the nearby racetrack) and Judy will have to sell the Sanitorium in a couple of days to cover unpaid debts.  Worse yet, although Upjohn has the funds to pay off the debts, she's tired of all its doctors telling her there's nothing wrong with her and is packing up to leave unless they hire her favorite doctor (who tells her what she wants to hear), Hugo Z. Hackenbush.  Chico cables him letting him know that if he comes to work for them, he can basically write his own meal ticket, and we learn that Hackenbush is (of course) Groucho, 

who is really a vet, but who had earlier soaked Upjohn for as much money as he could.  That's two of the three brothers.  Harpo is a jockey at the nearby racetrack who works for the horrible Morgan, who has sold a horse to Gil, the romantic lead of the movie (the same Zeppo lookalike who plays the same role in Opera, and who can actually really sing) because the horse can't stand Morgan so much that it goes crazy whenever it sees or hears him.  Gil's plan is that the horse will make him enough money that he can pay off the Sanitorium's debt, but Judy is outraged at him blowing all the money he's earned at his job of nightclub singer on this hairbrained scheme.  Anyway, all the pieces are there: Groucho arrives, placates Mrs. Upjohn, but enrages the man who wants to buy the Sanitorium, who thinks he's going to ruin his plans, and suspects him of being a phony, and (in one of my favorite scenes) tries to get through to the chief medical records office of Florida to check on Hackenbush's credentials, only to be intercepted by Groucho who does a number of impersonations that enrage our villain into yelling, so that he, as himself, calls on the intercom and tells him to pipe down because he's upsetting the patients.  This causes the villain to leave the phone just long enough so that when he comes back Groucho pretends that while he was away he told him the information he wanted.  Anyway, it's good.  I actually like that better than the more famous "Tootsie Frootsie" routine that he and Chico do, that involves Chico selling him a bunch of books to stall him from betting on the horse Chico wants to win.  For my money that one drags a bit.  There are also numerous musical interludes - not just the usual (now reinstated after Duck Soup) Chico piano 

and Harpo harp scenes, but an amazing Busby Berkeley-esque dance routine (starring a woman who goes on to attempt to seduce Groucho on behalf of the villain, who wants to burst in on them with the smitten Mrs. Upjohn in an attempt to break Groucho's hold on her, but the scheme is foiled because Chico and Harpo get wind of it) 

and later on a huge series of song and dance numbers featuring what looks like almost a hundred black extras, who represent the poor folk who live around the stables where the three brothers are hiding out after things go south at the Sanitorium, and starring Ivie Anderson, who was the first singer for Duke Ellington's band.  

This ends, regrettably, with the brothers applying blackface to "blend in" when the villains (one of whom is the sheriff) come looking for them.  But (perhaps mercifully) nobody is fooled.  The big climax of the film is, of course, at the race track, where Chico in particular has to cook up a bunch of schemes to delay the big race while Gil and Judy and Harpo steel back Gil's horse (whom Morgan repossessed) to enter the big race (having discovered that the horse's true talent is in the steeplechase).  Harpo rides the horse to great effect, helped by pictures of Morgan and Groucho and Gil getting Morgan to shriek over the intercom, producing the desired maddening effect on the horse at the requisite junctures.  Top entertainment all round, of all sorts (singing, dancing, musical performances, wordplay, horse racing - the movie is positively overstuffed), although I did find it to drag occasionally, which is unsurprising considering that it is almost twice as long as Duck Soup (and apparently was originally even longer - two songs were cut after early showings).  Definitely a top ten Marx Brothers film!

Film review: Top Secret! (1984)

Very silly.  This is by the people who did Airplane! but it comes across as a cross between Mel Brooks and South Park.  Not as laugh-out-loud as Airplane! and a few cringeworthy moments, but some inspired silliness.  It's a strange mix of a spoof of an Elvis film (with Val Kilmer doing an excellent job as a teen 50's style heartthrob, albeit singing a mix of 50's and 60's style music - the best being "Skeet Surfin'") with a cold war spy thriller/WWII war film (there's an obligatory nod to the Steve McQueen motorcycle jump in The Great Escape, albeit followed up by jumping a string of buses, a la Evel Knievel).  It's set in a bizarro East Germany that is somehow also Nazi Germany, and somehow has a French Resistance operating within it.  Of course it is pointless to quibble about absurdities in a film like this, where much of the humor is from sheer absurdity, sprayed at the viewer at such a speed and volume that if you don't like/get one joke (like the giant statue of a pigeon that has little flying humans pissing on it) then another will be along in a second.  Some work (the extended underwater western bar fight is inspired), many do not.  Crassness (like a sex toy called The Anal Intruder, with a giant fake fist attachment) abounds.  In fact, were it not for Val Kilmer's central sincere, sweet performance, the film would probably fall flat, as very few of the other performers (who are mostly recognizable, if at all, from 70's British TV - with the odd exception of Omar Sharif!) doing much heavy lifting.  If you've exhausted the early, good Mel Brooks (and Airplane!) then it's certainly preferable to watching History of the World or anything later.  This should give you a taste - it claims to be the best bits, but there are plenty more of the same.