The Good Thing Asking For Movies As Gifts. . .

You don't feel bad for wasting your own money if you don't like them.

I hadn't head of Twelve Chairs before, but I figured Mel Brooks has a pretty high success rate with me, it was worth a try. I didn't realize the movie is based on a story by two Russian journalists. I think that, combined with being made somewhat earlier in Brooks' career (it's his second directorial credit, after The Producers) is why it doesn't feel very much like one of his films.

The story is set in 1927, and former aristocrat Ippolit Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody) is still struggling with being a menial clerk in the new Soviet state. His mother, on her deathbed, confides that she hid her jewels in one of the 12 chairs they had in their dining room before the Revolution. Vorobyaninov sets off after the chairs, which naturally leads him all over Russia, in the company of a sort of roguish beggar named Ostap Bender (Frank Langella). Before she died, Ippolit's mother also revealed this secret to her priest (Dom DeLuise), so he's in the mix as well.

There was on bit in the film that really made me laugh. A street sign said "Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky Way", except Trotsky had been X'ed out. What? On the whole, I didn't find it very amusing. If DeLuise had toned things down about 4 notches, I think his character would have worked better, but as it stood, he overdid it so much it was mostly annoying.

I couldn't understand why Bender didn't ditch Ippolit sooner. I understand the thematic reason, assuming I understand what Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov were going for, but on a pure story level it doesn't make sense. Bender does more of the work in finding the chairs, getting them into places, past guards or employees. The few times he asks Ippolit to do something, such as taking part in a play to maintain the lie that he's an actor), Ippolit utterly fails.

I'm sure there's a point to that. The bourgeois are greedy, selfish, proud and haughty without having any particular skills to merit being proud. They are completely worthless, existing only to drain others' wealth and prosperity. The one time Ippolit is useful, it's by pretending to have epilepsy so that people will take pity and give him money they need to continue. But Bender is the one who conceived of the idea, and he likely could have figured another way. Granted, it probably would have been something sleazy like wooing some housewife (he clearly fancies himself a ladies' man), but still, he could have managed without Ippolit.