Robin Hood Men in Tights (1993)
Directed by Mel Brooks
Written by Mel Brooks, Evan Chandler, J. David Shapiro
Starring Cary Elwes, Amy Yasbeck, Mel Brooks, Richard Lewis, Roger Rees, Isaac Hayes
Release Date July 28th, 1993
Published July 25th, 2023
Mel Brooks has a generational impact. For many, their Mel Brooks movie experience began with The Producers and proceeded to Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles. My Mel Brooks experience, due to having been born late in the Gen-X generation, was a little different. My Mel Brooks movies were Spaceballs and Robin Hood Men in Tights. The earlier Mel Brooks classics came to me later. Thus, I think I hold both Spaceballs and Robin Hood Men in Tights in high regard because I simply saw them and fell in love with them first.
This doesn't mean that I believe that Spaceballs and Robin Hood Men in Tights are better than the Brooks 1970s movies. It just means that I have a much softer spot for Brooks 80s period, one that many older Brooks fans do not share. Older fans of Mel Brooks have often stated that Brooks became a bit to reliant on referring to his past glory in the 80s and early 90s. They aren't entirely wrong. Both Spaceballs and Robin Hood Men in Tights rely heavily on referring to gags and characters that Brooks invented in his glorious 60s and 70s peak.
That said, I still love Robin Hood Men in Tights and looking back on it 30 years after it was released, I was surprised to find that my love for the film is as strong as ever. Brooks' ingenious satire of Kevin Costner's dreary Robin Hood adaptation is also a loving homage to the original telling of Robin Hood on the big screen, that undertaken by the legendary Errol Flynn in the 1930s. Weaving nods to both of those Robin Hood stories, amid references to his own legendary canon, Mel Brooks created Robin Hood Men in Tights, a cocksure, headstrong comedy that stands on its own. Or was that the other way around?
The brilliance of Mel Brooks is on display immediately in Robin Hood Men in Tights. Within moments of his credits sequence bursting on the screen with heroic music and the visual of fiery arrows being fired into the distance, Brooks begins breaking the fourth wall. The credits arrows have hit a nearby village, lighting the whole thing on fire as residents complain that this happens every time someone makes a Robin Hood movie. The very funny meta gag ends with the extras turning to the camera to tell Mel Brooks to leave them alone.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media
