Customer Reviews for
2000 Year Old Man
funny, but not the same
I bought this and was disappointed. It's got the original sketch's put to a cartoon, with sound effects put to it.2000 Year Old Man
Mel Brooks at His Best
My son was performing in a show this summer and he was looking for examples of a particular cultural accent for one of the show's songs. I immediately thought of the amazing Mel Brooks, and I started looking for a DVD of The 2000 Year Old Man, which I thought was perfect for what he was searching for. I found it at Amazon, briefly looked at the various editions, and quickly picked the one I purchased. It arrived almost overnight, and I occasionally stopped by my son's room to watch the DVD, and enjoy his reaction to this timeless comedy piece. We were surpised and delighted to see that I had chosen the animated version, and I found it added a wonderful new dimension to the original recording I had heard as a young girl. My son thoroughly enjoyed it, and learned a great deal from it. It also gave him a new appreciation of the genius of Mel Brooks, and, thanks to the DVD, he performed the song brilliantly -- he actually exceeded my expectations, if that's indeed possible. I would wholeheartedly recommend The 2000 Year Old Man as an example of brilliant timeless comedy at its best.2000 Year Old Man
2000 Year Old Man
Fun to see again and to share with a new generation.2000 Year Old Man
'Old very very old'
The 'Two- Thousand Year Old Man' record was one of the funniest comic recordings of all time. My high- school friends and I listened to it over and over again. We would go into uncontrollable wild laughter over it , laughter which ended in total exhaustion and a sense of emptiness. I at the time had a very uneasy feeling about 'laughing so much' in this way.
Reiner asks Brooks, the two- thousand year old man how old he feels and Brooks says 'Old very very old'. Their conversation in which Reiner is the straight- man interviewer and Brooks has ninety- percent of the funny lines is a crazily inventive and unpredictable one. One reviewer has quoted a line from it, " A lion is eating my forearm, will somebody call a cop?' This line gives the real spirit of it. Brooks had a bit of a Yiddishy accent and his asides and banter add laughter to the laughter.
The record is better than the DVD simply because it leaves more to the imagination.2000 Year Old Man
Older Than You Think
I did not realize how old the sound-track of this made-for-television animation was until Carl Reiner, as the interviewer, set the scene, saying, "A plane landed at Idlewild." The sound track was probably taken from the record released in 1961. President JFK was still alive; his family had no compelling need to name things after him. So, the airport was still Idlewild, not Kennedy.
According to sources who have asked to remain nameless, since naming them would give away their real ages, Mel Brooks, the 2000 Year Old Man himself, and Carl Reiner performed this little interview throughout the 1950s, but never recorded it. I seem to remember reading somewhere, perhaps in The New Yorker Magazine, that the first recording took place at Reiner's home, sometime in the late 1950s. After dinner, Reiner turned on the tape recorder, walked the microphone over to Brooks - a dear friend and guest - and set the scene. Then he asked the first question...
I had the impression that the challenge was a new one for Brooks, but if my sources are correct, and they did predict that there would be no weapons of mass destruction, Brooks and Reiner had been through the routine many times before that fateful night.
Now, I have to ask, was that tape transcribed onto the record, or did the duo do it again for vinyl? I don't know, but I suspect they recorded it a few times. The reason is in the details. In the review that appeared in The New York Times in 1975, when the animation on this video was first broadcast on the CBS television network, there is a quote: "I have 25,000 children...and not one of them ever writes!" In the video the quote is "I have 42,000 children ... and does even one of them ever come over to visit?"
So, perhaps by the time Media Home Entertainment picked up the animation and marketed the version I have, in 1984, some things changed. Who knows? Both versions of the joke are funny, unless you are sitting at home, in the dark, waiting for your kids to call or come over, in which case neither version is funny.
But seriously, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you don't look where you are going, and fall in a hole, and die." Now, that's funny.2000 Year Old Man
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