It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Why? Just why? I can't believe they made this load of old tat. The 1967 "The Producers" was a masterpiece of ironic comedy and parody. It's still the best. This load of tripe doesn't come anywhere near. The script is near identical, but the acting is mediocre, and the musical numbers terrible. Worse, the Producers of THIS "Producers" have confused Irony with Slapstick. Once the PC brigade had been through the script with a red pen there is clearly nothing left. Sanitised. Waste of musical talent, waste of time. Get the Original 1967 version. It's as fresh today as it always has been. Mel Brookes' comedic genius at it's apogee.

A little more music and embellishing of several plot points that were passed over in the original film are what distinguishes this musical version of The Producers. It's a musical version about a film that had a plot about two men who try to create the biggest flop in the history of Broadway and a musical.Taking the places of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder as the producing partners Bialystock&Bloom are Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. Both these guys are given an impossible task of repeating two classically congruent performances that Mostel and Wilder created. Even the additional bits of business just can't make me forget the original. Will Ferrall did not come over from Broadway to do the role of the hermit like Nazi living in Greenwich Village and caring for his carrier pigeons. He had to do double duty because he also took the place of beatnik method actor Dick Shawn from the original. I'm not sure that combining the roles was the best thing, I'm also not sure Ferrall did real justice to either try as he might on both. Kenneth Mars was the reclusive Nazi author of Springtime For Hitler. in the original. Both he and Shawn were almost as memorable as Mostel and Wilder.I do love the Mel Brooks humor, but I think he laid it on a bit thick with the gay stereotyping of Gary Beach and Roger Bart. It came this close to the good side of being offensive, but not quite.There's a lot to like in this version of The Producers, but I think Mel should not have touched his masterpiece.

I've seen every version of The Producers--the 1967 film with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, the Broadway show with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and the movie musical with Lane and Broderick.Mel adapted his original film for Broadway tastes. It had to be a musical because that's what sells tickets in theater. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick were Broadway stars. However, the show was disappointing. A few of the musical numbers, particularly the old ladies and walkers was inventive. That Brooks had to include a song about being gay was cringe- worthy but necessary as Broadway musical theater audiences have to be hit over the head with the obvious. The show did not make a great film musical because it was not a great Broadway musical. Everything wrong about the musical starting with Lane and Broderick made its way to the screen. Lane and Broderick could never fill Mostel's and Wilder's shoes. Lane was too stridently fey, and Broderick too limply colorless. I disliked that some characters were combined, and that Ulla's character became Bloom's romantic interest. In the 1967 film, Bialystock was the great romancer. Everything and everyone was a conquest. Part of the fun was Bialystock's unstoppable wooing of the little old ladies for their money, of Bloom for his accounting wizardry, and everyone else who could serve his end game. Mel made a pot of money on his musical versions and I say bully for him. His genius was rewarded financially and theatrically with 12 Tony awards (not much competition that year). Saying that, if this is the only version of The Producers seen, there's enough humor and talent to entertain. It is nowhere and I mean nowhere nearly as funny and zany as the 1967 film. Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder are comedic giants. The original script and movie is simply one of the funniest ever.

I had great expectations of this movie; after all, I had watched the original 1968 version and enjoyed it very much. However I was never more bored watching endless Broadway songs one after another during the whole movie. The dialogs were dull, and the few laughs it offered were not enough to make up for the remainder of the movie. I feel like I wasted an hour and a half of my life. The original movie contained an actual story; whereas here we are greeted with songs interspersed with a few lines of actual dialog. I expected a lot better from this cast, but unfortunately, while trying to create a flop, they flopped themselves in a major way.