Look, Im sure you’ve read many MANY think pieces on the racial under and overtones of ‘Blazing Saddles’. On a moral level, im sure there are as many folks who enjoy the ‘humour’ in this for the wrong reasons as much as their are people who enjoy this film for the actual INTENDED humour of the work.

To clarify, my stance on this film is that ‘Blazing Saddles’ depicts white people (Wilder excluded) as big dumb idiot racists, and the black cast as self aware, charismatic and ‘knowing’, but not above, being silly. The humour ISNT in the fact that the majority of the cast get to use the hard ‘R’ word, its not in the racial profiling. its a lampooning of the time, what folks were generally like, and the absurdity of that time in history.

We as the audience are expected to relate and view the film from Bart and/or Jim ‘The Waco Kids’ perspective…In short, if you dont think this film has a clear leading character you can relate to, or if your finding yourself siding with Hedley Lamaar or Taggart…You’ve watched the film wrong. Its not that they couldnt make ‘Blazing Saddles’ these days because of ‘Woke’. Its that they dont NEED to make ‘Blazing Saddles’ because ‘Blazing Saddles’ already exists, and that time has been and gone.

The story of a former slave turned railway track layer, Bart is one step ahead of the men who beat him and his fellow workers, to the point that eventually through the dumb cowboys stupidity (and as part of a bigger plan by the devious Hedley Lamarr) he ends up unwittingly being assigned the title of ‘Sheriff of Rock Ridge’ a small town set up directly in the path of Lamarrs aforementioned railway line.

Rejected by a backwards and racist, god fearing town. Sheriff Bart lays low in the town jail, where he meets Jim (Wilder) a town drunk sobering up after a night in the cells. The pair strike up a friendship and its revealed that Jim is in fact ‘The Waco Kid’ the fastest hand in the west…with the shakes.

The pairs friendship ultimately results in a broader acceptance from the town, and after Hedley sends in several attempts to destroy the town that Bart disrupts and halts. The town slowly begins to warm to the pair. Leading to ever increasing chaotic moves from Hedley, his right hand man ‘Taggart’ and his lugnut henchman ‘Mungo’. Comedy ensues.

Cards on the table, ‘Blazing Saddles’ isnt my favourite Mel Brookes film, Its likely top 3…But I personally prefer ‘Young Frankenstein’ and ‘The Producers’ a little bit more. The script is a little on the saggy side for my taste. Its crammed to the gills with humour, but it throws so MUCH at the screen that, to me? it feels less like a carefully crafted and curated multi layer comedy, and more like a wet cake of every flavour thats slowly sliding off the cake board onto the floor. It has a VERY high hit rate on gags…but a lot of the gags, by modern standards are kind of lame, and some of the jokes left me with crickets.

The act structuring is pretty decent for the most part, it opens a little slower than i’d like, but once it works up a head of steam and really gets going, it delivers the kind of comedy gut punch you really want in a movie like this…Unfortunately Brookes cant help himself with the 3rd act and things get strangely meta as the plot leaves the highway, crashes through the barrier and heads to space. in scenes HIGHLY remeniscent of ‘Casino Royale’ from not some 7 years prior. I imagine people not familiar with ‘Royale’ would see the ending of this film as wonderfully ‘out of left field’, but to me I found it feeling a little creaky and ‘done’.

That isnt to fault the characters here who are all zany, wonderfully daffy and deleriously delightful. Its that same flavour of ‘Brookes’ magic that you know and love, with a little bit of help from Richard Pryor to really help get it over the line.

Direction is razor, imitating a lot of the classic western shot types and creative designs. If you wernt aware of the cast and went into this EXPECTING a western, you’d almost certainly really believe this was one for the first 10 minutes or so at least. GORGEOUS scene structuring and a clear creative direction in vision is pretty obvious here. It doesnt really bring anything ‘new’ to the genre…But what it does, it does very well and I appreciate it.

Same goes for the cast direction which is just STELLER. some of the best line deliveries, physical comedy and camera/set placements in Brooks career are present here and my god he is RELENTLESS. I Love Young Frankenstein and The Producers…but I do believe this may be Brooks best film for cast direction.

The cine too is lovely, if not a little simplistic at times. the wides and ultra wides really pop in HD and have a gorgeous depth to them. set based sequences however are a little simplistic, which is a shame, things settle into a bit of a drab brown and beige funk until we get to go on location again…which is a real shame because of how beautiful those location shots are.

The edit is a masterclass in comic timing, cuts are PERFECTLY timed with exactly the perfect amount of beats between the feed lines and the punch lines. a wonderful work, the only thing im a bit confused by really is more on a technical level. the transitions in this film seem to have an ultra long lead, meaning the footage degrades slightly for AGES both before and after a cross transition happens…In most films, its usually a few seconds either side…but here, almost entire sequences will have this degredation…I found it unusual…and a little distracting… ho hum.

Performance wise, everyones in their element. Cleavon Little is the star of the show as Sheriff Bart, charismatic, charming, perfect on line delivery. He has a wonderful screen presence and the film almost certainly would have been a poorer fare without him. Gene Wilder is surprisingly mute in this production, he doesnt really do a whole lot, but the handful of scenes where he does get a decent roll of the dice he unloads both barrels quite wonderfully and he gets the tone of the picture and his delivery near enoug perfect.

Harvey Korman as Hedley is a wonderfully cartoonish villain and an excellent foil to Littles performance. he’s much more up tight and subdued. But has a great physical performance that really helps carry the picture from first scene to last. The rest of the cast dont dissapoint either. Though a problem I have with this film (and a few of Brooks works) is it feels like the characters outside of the main core cast seem to only exist for one liners and dressing. and im not talking about extras…basically if your B-tier cast in a Mel Brooks production. Be prepared to have one really good joke handed to you, and then to basically just be relegated to either rumbling around in the background or doing that joke again in the background. Its a bit of a shame and I feel it would have been nice to give, what is a pretty stellar cast. a bit more depth or range to work with.

And finally; the soundtrack! its a PERFECT parody of the classic western genre, with just enough modernisation to help keep it feeling fresh. It cues the film perfectly, though does feel a little bit repetative by the end credits. maybe a bit more variety or range within the style they’re working with would have just helped seal the deal for me on this one.

‘Blazing Saddles’ is…pretty much fine. its fun, I enjoyed it, it absolutely has its moments and deserves the title of ‘A classic’, but I totally understand the arguement that even if its lampooning dumb racist culture…by using the language of racists, its culpable to racist enablement even if its just to a small degree. I personally dont go THAT far…but I understand that arguement more than the ‘you cant say/do these things anymore!’ arguement that right wingers seem to trott out every few years.

I think if you are offended even by just the words of racism, you probably wont be able to settle into this one. and I get that. if you can take this though for what it is (a sincere attempt to kick a load of racist wet wipes and their ancestors up the arse) I think you’ll quickly settle into, and enjoy this one.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/blazing-saddles/1/