Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!

That Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! is funny and well-sourced and thoughtfully composed isn’t surprising, but the emotional potency perhaps is.

The test for the picture, then, comes in whether it's possible to emerge from it with any new insight into the man himself and into why his work resonates as much as it does. And the filmmakers find plenty of material on both fronts.

After almost four hours, they will at least have a better sense of him. Apatow etches an indelible portrait that reveals what makes Mel Brooks run.

The master’s-level dissection of his comedy belongs in a time capsule, and Brooks’ lingering adoration of his wife, Anne Bancroft, is tender and touching.

The commentary by dozens of admirers and career-highlight TV and movie snippets are great of course, nostalgic but purposeful, meaningful in the context of Brooks’ life and influence on showbiz. But Apatow digs just deep enough to show that the guy is a true, honest-to-gosh restless artist at heart.

There's a subtle sweetness to the documentary that can be quite moving, especially if the work means something to you, as well.

An exhaustive look at Brooks’s life and art. As such, it’s easy to find yourself giggling uncontrollably over clips from “The Producers” (1967) or “Blazing Saddles” (1974). That alone is a pleasure. Still, this is more than just a history of how these cinematic classics came to be. It is also about Brooks’s longevity and the loneliness of being one of the last of a generation.

Many of the stories are well known, as are many of the clips (“May the Schwartz be with you!”), though the editing turns the well-trod into an asset.

We may know Mel Brooks as well as we can know anyone who lives, for us, primarily on screens. But “The 99-Year-Old Man!” is a good reminder that when it comes to kind and talented people, there’s always more to see.