Laughing Through a Century: Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man
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.