Requiem for a gag
Daniel Ross Goodman
History of the World, Part II proves that some things are really not worth the wait after all. The Monty Python-esque History of the World, Part I (1981) was one of Mel Brooks’s funniest and smartest movies from a career filled with uproarious filmic parodies. Part I also contained some of Brooks’s finest stand-alone comedic bits. There was the birth of art during the Stone Age, followed, of course, by the birth of the art critic, who, because language had yet to be invented, expresses his criticism by urinating on the caveman’s wall painting. There was the unforgettable 15 — er, 10! — Commandments gag. There was the hilarious Spanish Inquisition musical number, a set-piece of such bad taste to actually be funny in that absurd Producers manner that few comics other than Brooks can pull off, and the French Revolution sequence that put the “it’s good to be the king” idea to bed for good.
History of the World, Part I ended with a few “coming attractions” scenes to be delivered in an ostensible Part II: a Viking funeral, Hitler on Ice, and Jews in Space. Although the movie presented them as “coming attractions,” and although the movie’s subtitle is “Part I,” fans had always assumed that part of the joke of “Part I” is that Brooks never really intended for there to be a Part II, as with “next time on” endings of episodes of Arrested Development or The Simpsons’s end-credits jokes about a The Flanders spinoff series that we all knew would never happen. And, indeed, none of Part I’s “coming attractions” bits were ever realized. (Though Marjorie Taylor Greene might beg to differ about the “Jews in Space” one.) But now, there really is a History of the World, Part II, out on Hulu as a series in four parts. Unfortunately, it will have exactly no one asking, “What took them so long?”
The rationale for Part II is obvious enough: As filmmakers’ creativity fades and as audience eyeballs become increasingly difficult to draw away from phones and video games, movies and television have become increasingly reliant on proven quantities (aka “intellectual property”) from the past as safer investments for the present and future. Hence the upsurge in reboots, sequels, spinoffs, and prequels. These sorts of movies and TV shows may seem like better bets, as their creators do not have to create entirely new universes and can rely on fans’ goodwill from a past performance in order to attract many of those same fans to the spinoff. But toying with beloved memories can also backfire disastrously. In the immortal words of the title of a John Candy movie, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.
Mel Brooks is now 96 years old, which you (as I was) may have been astounded to realize, given how good he still looks. Having arrived at advanced alter kaker-dom (as he might say), who knows how much longer the rest of the comedy world still has to pay homage to a legend whose imprint can be observed on legions of comedians as clearly as footprints in fresh snow? It thus seemed like high time to honor one of the true legends of comedy in some grand fashion, and its producers hit on doing so not through a one-night Kennedy Center Honors-type event but through one of Brooks’s own previously successful vehicles.
History of the World, Part II is a comedic festschrift for Brooks, in which an impressive assortment of some of the most talented comedic actors of our time (Jack Black, J.B. Smoove, Wanda Sykes, Danny Devito, Rob Corddry, Jason Alexander, Josh Gad, Fred Armisen, Sarah Silverman, Seth Rogen) come together in a series of skits that attempt to honor one of the greatest comic talents ever. A nice idea on its surface, but it’s just too bad it came in this poorly executed form.
Part II appears to be geared toward a generation that doesn’t seem to care about anything that happened before 1985. The historical figures and events in its sketches are there not to satirize history but to make strangely unfunny jokes about the present. When Part I used anachronism, such as a character walking down a street in imperial Rome with a boombox over his shoulder, it was funny because of how seldom anachronisms otherwise appeared in the movie. In Part II, it’s a relief when a sketch does not resort to anachronisms. And, whereas the best festschrifts tend to have one or two dominant themes around which all of the different contributors’ essays coalesce, the history sketches of Part II have no common theme, driving force, or even the most basic chronological structure. Part I at least had a threadbare narrative that began with the dawn of man and moved from the biblical era to the Roman Empire and up through the French Revolution. Part II stumbles around history like a drunkard with a time machine, starting during the Civil War and then moving into the Russian Revolution, but then lurching all the way back to the prehistoric era before hurtling back into Elizabethan England, and then back into the Russian Revolution, then careering into World War II, plunging all the way back to the Bible, and then — oh gosh, I’m getting almost as nauseous as the seasick marines in the series’ D-Day sketch just thinking again about this aimless chronological seesawing.
The one sketch that almost — almost — redeems Part II is its Jesus and Judas sketch, in which Nick Kroll plays Judas and J.B. Smoove plays another of Jesus’s apostles. The sketch is more of a parody of Curb Your Enthusiasm than of the Gospels, and Smoove’s presence goes a long way to making you feel like you’re watching an episode of Curb in which Leon and Larry are having one of their inimitable casual breakfast-table riffs about how they would’ve behaved if they were in Jesus’s cadre of disciples. (I can almost hear Larry going, “I was liking the guy at first, but ‘Love your enemy’? Have you seen how the Arameans park their chariots?!”) The only problem is that while Smoove is here, Larry isn’t. It’s a bit like when Larry played George during the Curb “Seinfeld reunion” show, since Seinfeld writer Larry David based the character of George Costanza on himself, after all. Still, we remember the real, authentic thing not for what it almost is, but for the special magic that came together and made us laugh. All that Larry playing George did was remind us of how much we wanted George himself in the role of George. Much as, while watching History of the World, Part II, we’re continuously reminded of how much we would rather just be watching Part I.
Daniel Ross Goodman is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and the author, most recently, of Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Wonder and Religion in American Cinema.