Mel Brooks did a Samurai movie?

[Shades of Eternity]

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4428398/

Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank

I just saw it and I liked it, but it really felt like Mel got a bunch of friends together to goof off and have fun.

It is also the most meta-aware movie I've seen in years.

Honestly, it felt like a Mel Brooks compilation crossed with my last RPG campaign.

I loved it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Looking at clips, I can see some Blazing Saddles dna in evidence. Considering it was pitched as something of a remake, that’s not a surprise.

 

[Blue Orange]

We'll see if it gets sold in Sweden as Springtime for Hank.

Definitely seems aimed at the kids' parents, but maybe with the funny animals it'll be a fun movie for the whole family?

Samurai were the upper classes, you didn't become one to be a protector of the weak...oh what the heck, it's a silly kids' movie.

I suppose they got Mel's voice before he...wait, he's still alive? Dude's 96. I guess voice acting is less strenuous but man, dude's wringing every drop of life out of his lifespan. God bless him.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Looking at clips, I can see some Blazing Saddles dna in evidence. Considering it was pitched as something of a remake, that’s not a surprise.

It's a remake. The basic premise is the same, with race relations swapped for cat-dog relations and cowboys swapped for samurai. Evidently parts of it use literally the same jokes in scenes running parallel to the original. Mel Brooks's writing credit on the movie likely has more to do with it adapting material from his prior film than with any active involvement in this screenplay. At one point it was going to be called Blazing Samurai, which is still the theme song.

My guess would be that they just ultimately decided not to explicitly market it as a remake because replacing a plot about White settlers up in arms over a Black sheriff with cartoon cats up in arms over a dog samurai, and all the other incumbent toon-washing of Blazing Saddles into something toothless that people will park small children in front of in 2022 probably invited more hot-takes and controversy than they want for what I'm guessing is a mid-budget children's movie with no greater ambition than to lock up the ticket sales of families with small children for a couple weeks in July. And it was probably the right decision.