Pun Salad

Things worth noting:

• The IMDB trivia notes: "This is a movie based on a play based on a movie about a play." Heh.

• Holy cats, it's long. One hundred and thirty-freakin-four minutes. Lots of funny stuff, but they could have cut out a good 30 minutes without losing any of it. (The original Producers clocked in at 88 minutes.)

• Nathan Lane is great, of course, but I kept thinking: if only the young Groucho Marx could somehow be brought back … he would have been beyond perfect in the role of Max Bialystock. Maybe in 20 years some kid will be able to do that on his desktop on a whim: sample Groucho's image, voice, and mannerisms from the Marx Brothers digital archive, and just plug him into Nathan Lane's part here.

  Or maybe that could happen next week. What do I know? What I do know is, I'd like to see it.

• Uma Thurman remains very easy on the eyes, and is pretty funny to boot.

• Ernie Sabella turns up in a deleted scene; as noted by the IMDB trivia (again), this is a reunion for Simba, Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King. Very cool!

• The DVD outtakes are marred by (I approximate) 536 scenes where Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane are giggling at each other. They could have cut that down a bit.

• Stay to the end of the credits to see Mel.