Anthony's Film Review - Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)

Despite the collaboration between Mel Brooks and Leslie Nielsen, this movie lacks plenty of good humor...

Dracula: Dead and Loving It brings together two of my favorite people in comedy films: Mel Brooks and Leslie Nielsen. I've enjoyed watching movies like The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Airplane!, and the Naked Gun movies. Naturally, you'd expect comic writer Brooks and comic actor Nielsen to join forces and create something funnier than what they've done before. That was the only reason I saw Dracula: Dead and Loving It.

The main problem with this movie is that it was made far down the line in the careers of Brooks and Nielsen. In other words, past their prime, their peak. It's one thing if this was made in the 1970s or 1980s when their creativity, and therefore material, was more fresh. That's not the case. The result is that this comedy feels underwhelming, as if the comedy team was getting burnt out but was nevertheless expected to deliver a good joke.

If you've seen other Dracula movies or read the Bram Stoker novel, you know what it's about, and it's similar here. You have a group of people who are terrorized by a vampire named Dracula. One of these individuals is a man named Renfield who is practically going insane as a result. As the threat of Dracula looms, there is talk about ways to defeat this vampire.

Now, of course, this is a comedy that spoofs vampire movies, so the main source of entertainment are jokes. However, the jokes are mostly the kind that produce a smile but essentially no laughter. For example, Dracula has a bad dream and wakes up from his coffin, realizing he just had a "daymare." The only joke that made me laugh just a little involved driving a stake into someone's heart. It's funny because gratuitous amounts of blood shoot up from the body, spraying two characters. It happens even with a second strike of the stake into the heart.

In the end, the movie is a predictable comedy with flat jokes. The problem, obviously, is not in the choice of subject to parody, because I'm open to laughing at any kind of spoof. It's just that Mel Brooks was trying to keep the same old thing going for so long. Not that he isn't talented. He's just like everyone else where quality may suffer once something is done continuously for a long time. The same thing goes for Leslie Nielsen. But I will say that it's nice to see the two together for once, even if this is the only time they're ever credited together.

Anthony's Rating:

For more information about Dracula: Dead and Loving It, visit the Internet Movie Database.