This year is the 20th anniversary for Mel Brooks' underrated comedy Life Stinks, which was a departure for Brooks in that it was the first straight story he had done since The Twelve Chairs in 1970. It wasn't a parody of a genre like Spaceballs, Blazing Saddles, Silent Movie, and High Anxiety. This was a story trying to show us the plight of the homeless, which is all around us. How many panhandlers do we see on the subway going to work or outside a McDonald's that we brush off? What about the people who wipe windshields down at the Holland Tunnel? These are people who have been thrown away by the system that seems to thrive on keeping the rich in power and not understanding that as Brooks' character says, "Every person has the right to have a place to live." Brooks is showing us that it isn't easy out there and there are dangerous elements that we need to take care of. So why don't we try to deal with this problem? I have the answer from George Carlin's 1992 HBO special: There is no money to be made off the homeless. You need to have a solution that ends homelessness and have the corporate guys steal money in the process instead of just trying to care for your fellow man through human decency, which isn't going to happen because we are a selfish species who only care for our own welfare. As to this film, the best moment to me is when Brooks' character sees a homeless friend has died and he is just being taken away to the morgue. Watch how Brooks is acting in the scene. He realizes that there are many like his friend who have become victims and it is almost due to his past being uncaring about them, as he was in the opening scene, when he doesn't care about consequences to actions he is taking in tearing down people's homes. So why didn't this film do better in this country? Well, yeah, it was released under MGM, which had financial problems and still does, but I have the feeling that even if it had been released on 2000 screens at once, people would not have wanted to see a film that criticizes its country. Brooks himself mentioned how the film became a big hit overseas for him. I guess other countries were more open to our problems. We should not be patting ourselves on the back saying we're a great country. We have our own faults too and we need to look at them. It is so ever true today. The whole bit where Tambor's character bribes Brooks' lawyers to join him in betraying Brooks is just like the Wall Street meltdown of 2008. These guys could have been on Wall Street doing the same thing. I would've loved to have been a judge disbarring the lawyers that pulled this stunt on Brooks. Anyway, this is a film that should've won Best Screenplay at the Oscars as well. I hope that people seek out this film and realize, "There but for the grace of God, go I." In this day and age, this film was an omen.
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