Young Frankenstein is a redemption arc
Dec. 12th, 2017 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brushwolfSo I realized a dumb thing about Young Frankenstein, my fave Mel Brooks movie; it's a redemption arc for Frederic Frankenstein, and the Frankenstein legacy in general.
Typically reasons I think it's the best Mel Brooks movie are that his love for the old Universal films really shines through, and because he can't resort to jokes about Jews, Blacks and Gays, which are sort of Mel Brooks' lazy default. Even the obvious sloppy default dick size joke doesn't surface all that often.
But now I'm thinking the biggest reason it's so good is that there's actual substance. I figure anyone watching the movie will have Shelley's original or the Universal films tucked in their head, all these story lines in which Victor Frankenstein either really hates his creation (heck, for just looking like a batch of corpses he stitched together!) or at best the Monster is only an intellectual curiosity for him. By comparison Frederic's relationship to his Monster starts as intellectual curiosity, goes to acceptance (of basically his own severely developmentally disabled child), and eventually risking his own life to try giving the Monster a chance at survival. Take out the jokes and it's a pretty solid story, by comparison to say Spaceballs, which is incredibly fun but there's not really all that much there.
Typically reasons I think it's the best Mel Brooks movie are that his love for the old Universal films really shines through, and because he can't resort to jokes about Jews, Blacks and Gays, which are sort of Mel Brooks' lazy default. Even the obvious sloppy default dick size joke doesn't surface all that often.
But now I'm thinking the biggest reason it's so good is that there's actual substance. I figure anyone watching the movie will have Shelley's original or the Universal films tucked in their head, all these story lines in which Victor Frankenstein either really hates his creation (heck, for just looking like a batch of corpses he stitched together!) or at best the Monster is only an intellectual curiosity for him. By comparison Frederic's relationship to his Monster starts as intellectual curiosity, goes to acceptance (of basically his own severely developmentally disabled child), and eventually risking his own life to try giving the Monster a chance at survival. Take out the jokes and it's a pretty solid story, by comparison to say Spaceballs, which is incredibly fun but there's not really all that much there.