Robin Hood: Men in Tights

Mel Brooks has made a movie that's completely free and spontaneous, which at the same time is not in any way lazy or sloppy. [28 July 1993, p.E1]

Robin Hood: Men in Tights marks a return to the wild, anarchic scatological comedies that made Mel Brooks a marquee name around the world. It is a film for his diehard fans and for a new generation who only know Mad Mel from legend. Read full review

Men in Tights does work more often than not, even if the jokes are a little cheaper than normal. Read full review

Parodies are hard to do well, as is shown by the mediocrity of so many recent attempts. No matter how ripe a genre is for satirizing, unless you know how to do it, there are no guarantees. Fortunately for Men in Tights, Mel Brooks has been doing this kind of thing for decades. Read full review

It should be said that this negligible absence of Brooks’s boundary hopping wit and untamed performances doesn’t quite render Men in Tights unwatchable. There’s an appropriate, albeit languid merriment to the proceedings kept alive by a few choice cameos (Dick van Patten, Dom DeLouise, Brooks himself) and a handful of gags that land on their feet. Read full review

Robin Hood: Men in Tights is a sturdily crafted but only mildly amusing goof on Kevin Costner's 1991 Sherwood Forest outing. It further confirms that Mel Brooks has lost something off his fastball since Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. [28 July 1993, p.22]

It hits a couple of ecstatically funny high points, only to plummet into a bog of second-rate gags, emerging a long time later to engage the audience by the sheer, unstoppable force of the Brooks chutzpah. Read full review

A decent-enough inroad to one of film history’s most respected parodists. Read full review

Mel Brooks has never been a finesse comic, and no one expects him to hit with every gag. But this film reminds you how far his films have slipped behind the shotgun comedies of the Zucker brothers (David and Jerry) and Jim Abrahams, collectively and singly, who have built on Airplane! to a broad- gag frenzy. [28 July 1993, p.E2]

Sadly, this will not go down as one of Brooks' classics. Read full review

Although sporadically funny and not quite the disaster it was initially made out to be, this ROBIN HOOD robs gags from other films while giving the poor viewer far too few laughs. Read full review

One glance at the title shows you just where Brooks's head is these days: in his pants, specifically, in the area immediately below the belt. The one-time master parodist (Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein) seems so focused on this universe bounded by the ass on one end, so to speak, and the groin on the other, that he forgets to do anything at all original to spoof Robin Hood or the swashbuckling films Hollywood has made of him. Read full review

Instead of the inspired Brooks of Young Frankenstein, we get the middling Brooks of Spaceballs, in which you can see nearly every joke hovering like the Goodyear blimp. [28 July 1993, p.8D]

The problem with Mel Brooks these days is the same one Woody Allen would have if he kept making Bananas over and over. [30 July 1993, p.3F]

Maybe Brooks has lost his touch, maybe some of us are getting too old to revel in toilet humour or maybe Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves was just too lousy a picture for Mel to bounce his manic slapstick from. Either way, Kevin Costner's earnestly self-important Robin Hood remains distinctly funnier, laugh for unintentional laugh, than Mel Brook's satirical one.[29 July 1993]

Out-and-out dud, underlining how far the mighty have fallen. Read full review

A standard, camp, unapologetic Mel Brooks parody, with digs at Kevin Costner's Prince of Thieves and its multi-racial Merry Men, and an arsenal of throw-away gags. An impressive cast - Stewart, Hayes, Ullman - cannot unfortunately save the day. Read full review

Robin Hood: Men in Tights is a pointless and untimely lampoon of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves from the increasingly creaky spoofmeister Mel Brooks. A predictable onslaught of bad taste and worse jokes, it mostly targets not the conventions of action-adventures but the sexual preferences of the merry men, who are variously referred to as pansies, fagalas and fruits. Brooks fills in the spaces with broadsides derogatory to women and the one interest group you can readily afford to offend on film -- blind folks. Read full review

How this smart and funny man, he of the convulsive Tonight Show performances and the great Young Frankenstein, could end up putting his name on lame comedies like this one remains one of the great mysteries of the day. [28 July 1993, p.37]

With his inspiration trapped in a time warp two decades old, Brooks' humor reminds you of the annoying uncle who would repeat ancient jokes at family gatherings. You smile politely, but you wish he'd just go away. [28 July 1993, p.E5]

Perhaps if I hadn't laughed so hard at a recent revival of Blazing Saddles, then Mel Brooks' new film, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, wouldn't be such a dismal disappointment. [28 July 1993, p.6B]

Many years ago, Mel Brooks made up his mind about what was funny and he hasn't budged since. [30 July 1993, p.21]