For only a handful of entertainers can their biography feel so synonymous with the century that gave rise to them. Mel Brooks may be one of those entertainers. Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man, the wide-ranging two-part documentary from directors Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio exists not only as a career-spanning retrospective but as a time capsule of sorts; one fortunate to catch its subject with the quickness still in his step and his comedic wit fully intact, anxiously aware of his fortune at having lived this long. Streaming on HBO Max, the film chronicles Brooks’s life from his Brooklyn childhood in 1926 to the edge of his hundredth birthday, which he reaches at the end of June, and does so with a mix of reverence, invention, and affectionate chaos that feels wholly appropriate.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
I’ve always loved Mel Brooks, but nothing here feels unnecessary. What the documentary makes clear—sometimes hilariously, sometimes with unexpected pathos—is that loving Mel Brooks isn’t about nostalgia. It’s understanding how he rewrote the rules of comedy by never taking it—never allowing anyone to take comedy—nicely. The film spans that journey carefully, from Brooks’s childhood as Melvin Kaminsky, raised by his mother after his father died when Brooks was young. Brooks doesn’t often sentimentalize that void, but perhaps because we know him so well, the documentary recognizes the loss. It frames comedy not as an escape from pain, but as a means of protection from it.
Apatow and Bonfiglio structure the documentary around a deceptively simple but inspired idea: Brooks is allowed to tell his stories the way he always has—repeatedly, joyfully, and often with slight variations—while the filmmakers split those anecdotes across multiple visual sources. Interviews, archival footage, old talk-show appearances, home movies, and contemporary sit-downs are intercut so that the same story may arrive from three or four directions. On paper, this could feel redundant. On screen, it becomes a revelation.
You begin to understand that Brooks doesn’t repeat himself because he’s out of material; he repeats himself because storytelling itself is the joke. The rhythm, the timing, the expectation—those are the punchlines.
Critics have responded favorably to this sentiment. Several reviewers noted that the film’s willingness to let Brooks circle back to familiar territory mirrors the way memory actually works at ninety-nine: nonlinear, playful, occasionally obsessive, and deeply human. Fans have received the film warmly as well, especially older fans who view these stories not as redundancies but as homages. This is how Brooks remembers his past: by never letting go of it.
The documentary’s emotional core rests in Brooks’s relationships, and here the film is at its most unexpectedly tender. His friendship with Carl Reiner—whom Brooks jokingly but affectionately refers to as his “father,” even though Reiner was technically his collaborator and peer—is handled with extraordinary care. Their partnership, forged on Your Show of Shows and sustained through decades of shared lunches, recordings, and late-life creative projects, is presented as one of the great comic love stories. You can see it in Brooks’s face when Reiner’s name comes up: the spark, the gratitude, the loss. They didn’t just make each other laugh. They made each other better.
Watching Rob Reiner interviewed about his father’s friendship with Brooks was particularly poignant. Realizing that Reiner himself has passed away now makes those segments especially heartbreaking. For a moment, documentary shifts into a contemplation of artistic legacies - of laughter, ideals, and love inherited between not only children and parents but between friends who become family.
Equally central is Brooks’s marriage to Anne Bancroft, portrayed here not as a footnote to his career but as one of its stabilizing forces. Their relationship emerges as nearly perfect—not in the sense of being conflict-free, but in its mutual respect and fierce support. Bancroft, a formidable talent in her own right, never diminished Brooks’s outrageousness, and Brooks never diminished Bancroft’s seriousness. The documentary makes a persuasive case that their marriage worked precisely because neither tried to eclipse the other. Archival footage of the two together crackles with warmth and mischief, and Brooks’s reflections on Bancroft’s death are among the film’s most quietly devastating moments.
Brooks’s survey of his career is exhaustive without being scholarly. His movies (The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, Spaceballs) are revisited not as scripture but as taunting middle fingers. Documentary doesn’t duck contentious matters around Blazing Saddles and Brooks doesn’t dodge, either, remaining as lucid today as he has been for half a century: Satire only works if it aims up, not down, and comedy need not be cruelty’s foot soldier—it can fight back. Brooks gets that affirmation throughout the film from comedians and filmmakers' generations his junior who remember exactly where they were the first time they saw him confirm what every jokester learns in kindergarten: Comedy can be anarchic, yes, but also morally exacting.
A fascinating question the documentary doesn't address head-on is whether Brooks ever had a beef with anybody. Judging by the mountain of interviews testifying to his kindness, the answer would appear to be: rarely. Brooks's warmth—in dealing with collaborators, performers, writers—is illustrated again and again. Interviewees praise him not just as being hilarious, but loyal, supportive, and aggressively protective of artists' rights. His reputation, it seems, is every bit as important as his body of work.
Technically speaking, they don't try anything fancy. Apatow and Bonfiglio understand clarity better than trickery, allowing Brooks’s voice and spirit to take center stage. The editing has snap, the archival research is inspired, and the two hours feel less earned indulgent. If there’s a criticism to be made, it’s that the film occasionally assumes a level of familiarity with Brooks’s work that younger viewers may not fully possess—but even then, the sheer joy of Brooks telling his own story bridges that gap.
Audiences have responded in similar ways—with laughter and tears. Viewers have said they were unexpectedly touched by the film, especially towards the end when Brooks muses on having outlived friends, collaborators and even whole generations of comedy. Brooks faces ninety-nine years old, and now a hundred, not as if it were a novelty act but as a duty. He knows he's a bridge to a lost time, and the film treats him as such without freezing him in amber.
In the end, Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man works because it appreciates his greatest accomplishment: longevity. Brooks didn’t just make comedy last; he made sure he did too. Despite the shifting world around him, he never stopped laughing at it. Brooks’ documentary captures that joy—juvenile, loving, maddeningly vital—and allows us to hold on to it right now when it seems more important than ever.
As Brooks turns one hundred, this film feels less like a victory lap than a thank-you note—to the audience, to his collaborators, to the century that shaped him, and to the laughter that carried him through it. Streaming now on HBO Max, it’s not just a portrait of a comedy legend. It’s a reminder that humor, when wielded with intelligence and heart, can last a lifetime—and sometimes even longer.
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