When it was first released, the film received a mixed response and garnered some exceptionally harsh reviews, while others considered it a great success. One of the mixed reviews came from
Renata Adler, who, writing for
The New York Times, stated: "
The Producers, which opened yesterday at the Fine Arts Theater, is a violently mixed bag. Some of it is shoddy and gross and cruel; the rest is funny in an entirely unexpected way." About the acting, she writes that Mostel is "overacting grotesquely under the direction of Mel Brooks" and that, in the role of Max Bialystock, he is "as gross and unfunny as only an enormous comedian bearing down too hard on some frail, tasteless routines can be". Co-star Wilder fares better and is called "wonderful", thanks to doing "fine", despite being "forced to be as loud and as fast as Mostel" and "[g]oing through long, infinitely variegated riffs and arpeggios of neuroticism", and playing his part "as though he were
Dustin Hoffman being played by
Danny Kaye". She also puts the movie into the bigger context of "contemporary" comedy and that it has the same "episodic,
revue quality" in the way it is "not building laughter, but stringing it together skit after skit, some vile, some boffo". Her early conclusion, at the end of the first paragraph, is also a comparison to other comedic movies of the time, it reads: "[
The Producers] is less delicate than
Lenny Bruce, less funny than
Dr. Strangelove, but much funnier than
The Loved One or ''
What's New Pussycat?''" The more critical and negative reviews partly targeted the directorial style and broad ethnic humor, but also commonly noted the bad taste and insensitivity of devising a broad comedy about two Jews conspiring to cheat theatrical investors by devising a designed-to-fail tasteless Broadway musical about
Hitler only 23 years after the end of
World War II. Among the harshest critics were
Stanley Kauffmann in
The New Republic, who wrote that "the film bloats into sogginess" and "Springtime for Hitler ... doesn't even rise to the level of tastelessness",
John Simon wrote
The Producers "is a model of how not to make a comedy", and
Pauline Kael who called it "amateurishly crude" in
The New Yorker: On the other hand, others considered the film to be a great success.
Time magazine's reviewers wrote that the film was "hilariously funny" but pointed out that "the film is burdened with the kind of plot that demands resolution" but unfortunately "ends in a whimper of sentimentality". Although they labelled it "disjointed and inconsistent", they also praised it as "a wildly funny joy ride", and concluded by saying that "despite its bad moments, [it] is some of the funniest American cinema comedy in years". The film industry trade paper
Variety wrote, "The film is unmatched in the scenes featuring Mostel and Wilder alone together, and several episodes with other actors are truly rare." Wanda Hale of the New York
Daily News gave the film a full four-star rating and wrote that "Mel Brooks is a conjurer. Nobody but a conjurer could blend insanity and subtlety and make it a howling success as he has done with point with pride and say: 'This is my picture, my first feature movie.' And the place for you to see it and almost die laughing is at the Fine Arts Theater. [...] Anyone, from whose head came this fantasy with profound undertones, can be forgiven for occasional looseness in direction. But even so, Mel Brooks has done remarkably well with his first feature length film which is sheer magic." Joseph Gelmis of
Newsday called the film "a high-class low comedy about greed and vanity and the perils of trying to make it on Broadway." He also described Mostel and Wilder as "a thinking man's
slapstick team which is equidistant between
Laurel and Hardy and
W. C. Fields and
Franklin Pangborn." Over the years, the film has gained in stature. On
Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "A hilarious satire of the business side of Hollywood,
The Producers is one of Mel Brooks's finest, as well as funniest films, featuring standout performances by Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel." On
Metacritic, the film received a score of 96 based on 6 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". In his review decades later,
Roger Ebert claimed, "this is one of the funniest movies ever made". Ebert wrote, "I remember finding myself in an elevator with Brooks and his wife, actress
Anne Bancroft, in New York City a few months after
The Producers was released. A woman got onto the elevator, recognized him and said, 'I have to tell you, Mr. Brooks, that your movie is vulgar.' Brooks smiled benevolently. 'Lady,' he said, 'it rose below vulgarity. The film was a
sleeper hit at the U.S. box office; but Embassy Pictures deemed its initial theatrical run a flop – considering the additional costs to market and distribute, it barely broke even at the box-office.
Accolades In 1996, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States
Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the
National Film Registry. In 2006,
Writers Guild of America West ranked its screenplay 79th in WGA’s list of 101 Greatest Screenplays. The film is recognized by
American Film Institute in these lists: • 2000:
AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #11 • 2004:
AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs: • "
Springtime for Hitler" – #80 == Re-releases and adaptations ==