Save your money for something good and enjoyable

People are voting emotionally.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The second film that Mel Brooks directed after " The Producers" (1968)and this is loved by some and scorned by others. Put me in the line of scorners.There are laughs here, but there is a long gap between them,and film just seems to run out of ideas.Cast can't save it and just resort in the end to shouting and making other stupid noises. A poor comedy, at least better things were to follow.

I saw this years ago and it was painfully unfunny. I showed it to some friends because Brooks is usually funny and I wound up being embarrassed. I barely remember what it was about, but what stuck in my mind was that it was laugh free. It has something to do with three losers during the 1920's in Russia looking for some jewels that are hidden in the chairs of a deceased aristocrat They go through various ordeals and at times bored me to tears. Brooks here shows none of the talent he would later display in films like "Blazing Saddles" or "Young Frankenstein." I really hated this film and can't imagine what parts anyone laughed at.

I chose this movie because it was set in Russia and was pleasantly surprised, because I felt it presented a reasonably accurate portrait of the post-revolution Soviet Russia - obviously, that's just my opinion, but in this respect the movie delivered what I was hoping to see. I am not familiar with either Mel Brooks or with the original book so I did not know what to expect. The plot was pretty simple to follow, however, I didn't really feel it was enough to carry the whole movie. I think it was supposed to be funny, though I wouldn't call it a comedy. It had moments that elicited a chuckle or two, but that was about it. I would recommend it to get a glimpse of 1928 Russia which I thought was the strongest asset of the movie. If possible rent it rather than buy it, because I don't think this is a movie you would want to watch more than once.

By the Nineties what you expected from a Mel Brooks movie was a satire of film genres, whether it was horror, western, science fiction, the backstage show business story, the fertile mind of Mel Brooks somehow skewered them all. He did one remake of a classic comedy from the studio era with To Be Or Not To Be. But most of his work was his own original take on a film genre. The Twelve Chairs stands out as an odd fish among his work.Although it has some very funny moments it doesn't quite come off as well as The Producers or Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein. Perhaps it was because Brooks was not creating his own original work, but was filming a play from another source, a novel The Twelve Chairs by Soviet Union authors Ilyiu and Petrova.Former aristocrat Ron Moody who was quite lucky to be alive after the Russian Revolution hears a death bed confession from his mother that the family fortune is in jewels that the Bolesheviks didn't get, but was hidden in one of twelve parlor chairs the family owned. The Soviets confiscated the furniture and sold it to benefit the new government.Moody teams up with young gentleman thief Frank Langella to try and find the one chair with the loot. They have a rival in fake Russian Orthodox priest Dom DeLuise also looking for the chair with the swag.Moody steals the show in this one, thinking about the lost life he once had and that the chair will gain it back for him in some measure, he becomes positively more manic as the film continues. His performance is a whole lot like Zero Mostel's in The Producers.Still The Twelve Chairs is not what I've come to expect from Mel Brooks. He'd do so much better in his next film, Blazing Saddles.