The Producers began as a 1968 film comedy starring
Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder about a Broadway producer and an accountant who deliberately create a flop musical in order to pocket their investors' money, only to be foiled when the show turns into a success. Writer/director
Mel Brooks turned the story into an actual Broadway musical in 2001, even writing his own score (which satirized show music of the '40s and '50s), and it became a long-running hit. So, inevitably, a film based on the musical (based on the film about a musical) followed in 2005, and just as inevitably, there was a soundtrack album. The stage musical, of course, had generated a perfectly adequate cast album, making the soundtrack album a disposable redundancy, but never mind. The film features many of the same performers from Broadway, notably stars
Nathan Lane and
Matthew Broderick, along with
Gary Beach and
Roger Bart, although box-office names
Uma Thurman and
Will Ferrell have replaced others; both are unobjectionable. The orchestrations provide for a bigger orchestra, naturally. The album adds a good, if unnecessary new song, "There's Nothing Like a Show on Broadway," as well as a strange version of "Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop," re-titled "The Hop-Clop Goes On" and given an Adult Contemporary ballad arrangement. "The King of Broadway," one of the show's better songs, was cut from the film version, but a recording of it has been stuck on the end of the soundtrack album, anyway. The original Broadway cast album is still the recording of this music to buy. (A version of the soundtrack album sold only at Borders stores added another track, "In Old Bavaria.") ~ William Ruhlmann