A has been director (Mel Brooks) and his loyal assistants (Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman) devise the perfect plan to put his name back on the marquee: a silent picture, the first one in decades. Although hesitant, the studio head (Brooks' mentor Sid Caesar) agrees only if he can procure nothing less than the industry's biggest stars including Burt Reynolds, Liza Minnelli, James Caan, Anne Bancroft, and Paul Newman. Here Brooks takes on the admirable charge of crafting a completely silent movie (with one famous, ironical exception) and does so mostly with wit and impressive craft. Like many of his movies, some of the gags go on for too long and many miss the mark, but for the most part Silent Movie is an irreverent good time.
