Prince John: Latrine? Your family changed their name to Latrine?
Latrine: Yeah! It used to be Shithouse!
Prince John: Good change. It’s a good change.
There is a little more to unpack here than I’d assumed at the start. It’s just a spoof of medieval epics, right? And more specifically, it spoofs plot points and visuals from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1992), often stealing scenes outright or just wedging in a foreskin joke or a fart noise.
But Mel Brooks is one of those skeleton keys that open a door into my brain, and Men in Tights, with its high highs and low lows, is a perfect example of that go-for-broke comedy that I value so much but which often features topical jokes that don’t make sense even a couple of years later.
So, to start, I have to talk about this movie’s direct influence on me. Specifically, about a play that I wrote, directed, and performed in, in the sixth grade in front of the entire middle school at a Shakespeare Festival, and which was heavily indebted to Mel Brooks (and The Princess Bride (1987)). The title was… In Search of Spedrick.
Yes, I apologize, and will apologize again later.
The play had three acts. In the first, a woman scorns a suitor and becomes the queenly wife of the king-to-be (played by me), creating a lifelong enemy. In the second, the lifelong enemy hires kidnappers to steal the mentally disabled prince, in the hopes of a huge ransom and winning back the woman. In the third act, the king and his guards rescue the son and kill the kidnappers. There was a lot of swordfighting with wooden swords made by my dad (which were awesome and, to my memory, what received the most applause), and the third act hinged upon the prince leaving a breadcrumb trail of Legos as he was spirited away.
The dramatic portrayal of Prince Spedrick was as awful as you’d assume.
This experience bore some useful fruit for me as someone who tries to learn from their mistakes and be a better person going forward. I learned about the unnecessary cruelty of punching downward. I learned that live theater is a difficult place in which one hopes to control shitty children using offensive language (sorry, Mrs. W.!). I learned that people can get their way by just ignoring other people and pushing ahead, and that bad faith arguments are the domain of the true shithead (6th grade me: “Oh, I had no idea that was offensive! I just thought it was a medieval name.”).
Men in Tights is not as mean-spirited as my play. There are some groaners about Black culture (or charitably, about how movies marketed to White audiences portray Black characters) and about the Arabic language, but, having rewatched the movie in 2021, it was funny overall and my groans were mostly aimed at topical jokes (with references to Home Alone, Dirty Harry, and The Godfather among many). I think part of his filmography’s long life is that Mel Brooks usually* punched upward, aiming at bigots, cultural institutions, governments, and corporations, but another factor is that even his most mean-spirited characters** have a Marx Brothers / Looney Tunes anarchic twinkle in their eye.
Men in Tights also plays to its cast’s strengths, notably Cary Elwes’ charm, Richard Lewis doing classic Richard Lewis nervous schtick, and Tracey Ullman’s deeply committed character work.
The other great thing about Men in Tights—and about comedy films in general before hang-out improv comedy took over the genre—is the runtime. This movie is a breezy 100 minutes between the first flaming arrow and Mel Brooks (as Rabbi Tuckman) winking at the camera as the credits roll. Brooks’ movies in general run between 90 and 100 minutes, and that is something to respect: get in, launch your jokes, tell a little story, and get out. It used to be the trend in comedy that you’d want your, I dunno, good jokes, I guess, to be in the movie, with the rest left in your notebook to be polished and honed for future use. Compare that to something like Knocked Up or The 40-Year Old Virgin, which stretch out like Russian war epics just because no one could decide which gay joke to cut from the stream of improv.
Someone recently said—amusingly, I think it was the same Seth Rogen as in the linked clips above, reassuring me that I’m not alone in hoping to grow as a person even when it is easier not to—that maybe comedy isn’t meant to and shouldn’t exist forever. That because comedy is so rooted in the prejudices and fears and mores and desires of its time, that it cannot help but be a time capsule. I think that is in some part true. I find Duck Soup (1933) and His Girl Friday (1940) and Dr. Strangelove (1964) and MASH (1970) to be riotously funny, but maybe they are exceptions and for every film that outlives its moment, there are hundreds that don’t for a myriad of reasons. Or maybe there are just types of comedy that are universal and immortal (character-based comedy, physical comedy) and other kinds that are stale even a few months later (pop cultural references, gay panic, ethnic jokes: the domain of the Family Guys and SNLs).
I don’t know what to say. I have worked and continue to work to confront and root out my prejudices and only hope that others also make an effort to be better than our younger selves and those who came before (but again, I am sorry, and still have a long way to go). I was not and still am not sure how much past to dredge up as I write these. This kind of confessional may not help those hurt in the past, but maybe it nudges someone reading this to be better in the future.
Other 1993 Candidates: Tombstone; The Fugitive; Cliffhanger; The Pelican Brief; Groundhog Day; The Crying Game; Army of Darkness
* I am reminded of History of the World Part I (1981) despite my best efforts to forget that movie. Also, Mel directly reuses his “Jews in Space” song from History as the “Men in Tights” theme for this, which still annoys me. Maybe he ran out of time during production or something.
** Your mileage may vary on characters like Taggart, Renfield, and Franz Liebkind (of, respectively, Blazing Saddles (1974); Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995); and The Producers ((1967 and 2005)).
I turn 40 in December. To commemorate the milestone, I’m writing 40 short biographical essays pertaining to a movie per year of my life.