Life Stinks *** (1991, Mel Brooks, Lesley Ann Warren, Jeffrey Tambor, Stuart Pankin) – Classic Movie Review 3028

Mel Brooks plays a billionaire who takes a bet with a rival property developer that he can’t live as a penniless tramp on the streets of LA for a month. It turns out to be a tough gig but with a bitter-sweet conclusion. He loses his wealth but finds true love with Lesley Ann Warren and discovers real happiness.

This 1991 movie Life Stinks is a serious, Charlie Chaplinesque sentimental emotional drama from co-writer/ director / star Mel Brooks, interrupted by some typical and pretty funny comedy routines as well as a quick dance homage to Gene Kelly. Overall, even if it is perhaps not totally enthralling, it can be judged as inoffensively entertaining and lightly amusing, while Brooks himself keeps his dignity and even shows quite a bit of charm and considerable good karma. His niceness as a human being oozes through Life Stinks.

Very old-fashioned and gently paced, Life Stinks falls a long way short of having the sharpness of the 1983 Trading Places, which it resembles. But, despite the venom of some of the 1991 critics, it doesn’t stink at all, though, and has many nice moments, and all told is diverting and enjoyable.

The screenplay is by Mel Brooks, Rudy De Luca and Steve Haberman, from a story by Mel Brooks, Rudy De Luca, Ron Clark and Steve Haberman.

Also in the cast are Jeffrey Tambor, Stuart Pankin, Howard Morris, Brooks’s fellow writer Rudy De Luca, Billy Barty, Teddy Wilson, Matthew Faison, Michael Ensign and Brian Thompson. De Luca’s writing partner Sammy Shore plays the Reverend at Wedding. The duo co-founded the World Famous Comedy Store in Los Angeles in 1972.

RIP Sammy Shore.

RIP Sammy Shore, who died on 18 May 2019 in Las Vegas, aged 92. He made his film debut as Hotel Guest in The Bellboy (1960) and also appeared in Brooks’s History of the World: Part I (1981). His son is the actor and comedian Pauly Shore.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 3028

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