Review: Blazing saddles

Blazing Saddles

Blazing Saddles is 90 minute western film directed by Mel Brooks, it stars Cleavon Little and Harvey Korman. The plot sees a black man in 1800s America being appointed sheriff of a town as part of a plot targeting it.

I wasn’t really buying into this at first from initial impressions but seeing how the producers and that Dracula parody Brooks did show he had a knack for humour I gave this a full chance.
I may not have been amused by this as much as those films, however the comedy here benefits from its shamelessness, self-aware nature, daring approach for its time, unapologetic revelling in its own silliness, absurdity and aim to take the piss out of the whole genre, that it doesn’t run on for too long if another bonus point in its favour. There is a lot of energy and character here and Little, Gene Wilder and in particular Korman bring a whole lot of fun to their performances.   The odd premise, comedic timing and quotable script that stays with you help it all the more and the comedy is strong enough to make someone such as myself, a modern viewer still laugh.
But it’s the ending that caps off and really rises this film up into something so much more and shame on me for not seeing it coming but for a comedy to pull a plot twist like that, you won’t be forgetting blazing saddles anytime soon, that has to be seen to be believed, it goes full on circus worthy.
This film gets brought up with that recent Seth McFarlane movie Million ways to die in the west and while I have not seen that film, objectively from McFarlane’s career I can assume that the risqué racism here does a better job of using daftness to mock how daft racism is than that film.

Verdict: ****