We were getting two kinds of Spoof Movies in the 1970s and 1980s: the feature-length film and the rapid-fire collection of sketches.
The former category included elaborately constructed, often brilliant, full-length feature films such as Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” (both released in 1974), “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975) and “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” (1979) and the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker classics “Airplane!” (1980) and “The Naked Gun” (1988).
In the second division, a collection of sketches would be stitched together to movie length, such as the drive-in cult favorites “The Groove Tube” (1974) from Ken Shapiro, the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker/John Landis effort “The Kentucky Fried Movie” (1977) and Brooks’ “History of the World, Part I” (1981), which tackled the Stone Age, the Old Testament, the Roman empire and more, ending with a fake teaser-trailer for “History of the World, Part II,” which Brooks had no real intention of making.
Until now!
The eight-part Hulu series “History of the World, Part II” follows in the wacky footsteps of the original, tackling historical events in broadly comic, politically incorrect fashion, with jokes ranging from vaudeville-level corny to 21st century meta (including references to previous Brooks movies). And the old-timey routines are often funnier than the steady parade of social media gags.
Like the original, it’s a hit-and-miss affair. Some bits fall flat and wear out their welcome. But a greater percentage of the sketches provide some knowing chuckles and a few laugh-out-loud moments.
Occasionally, the parody is so spot-on that it’s more of an homage than a jab, like when five characters from the “Russian Revolution” story thread belt out a song in which they express their dreams, and it sounds EXACTLY like the kind of musical number that tops off Act 1 of a Broadway musical just before Intermission. (Jack Black’s Stalin, who yearns to emerge from the shadows and be recognized one day, is priceless.)
At the outset of the series, the 96-year-old Brooks says, “Hello! I’m American treasure Mel Brooks. To some of you, I’m a hero; to others, merely a legend.”
Brooks serves as executive producer and our host and narrator, with comedic stalwarts Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes and Ike Barinholtz leading the creative team.
We also get appearances from Kumail Nanjiani, J.B. Smoove, Quinta Brunson, Pamela Adlon, Danny DeVito, Zazie Beetz, Jay Ellis and Seth Rogen. And that’s just for starters. If I listed everybody who pops up, we’d be at the end of the review.
There are some impressive production values here in a perfectly crafted series of sketches about the first Black congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm (Sykes), that’s an homage to 1970s sitcoms such as “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons.” There’s also a spot-on parody of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” titled “Curb Your Judaism,” with Kroll portraying Judas and some familiar “Curb” regulars playing variations on their characters from the Larry David show.
Dove Cameron scores some laughs playing Anastasia as a social media influencer who cranks up a camera and delivers self-centered monologues, such as, “Hey you guys, it’s me, your girl, Princess Anastasia. For today’s tutorial, I feel like I’ve been seeing a lot of comments that you guys are, like, pretty downtrodden and, like, poor or whatever, so, um, I figured I would show you how to de-contour your cheeks!”
And so it goes. There’s a dead-on parody of “The Beatles: Get Back,” repositioned to take place during the time of, well, I’ll leave it at that.
At one point, there’s an actual reference to Hulu in a Hulu series, wink-wink, as everyone talks like they’re living in the 21st century, regardless of the time period. Why, it’s a wacky melding of the old and the new!
Typhoid Mary (Mary Holland) has a cooking show (get it, cuz Typhoid Mary was a cook?), while Galileo has a Cameo-type account called “Galilameo,” ha ha. Noah (Rogen) interprets God’s command to have two of everything on the ark to mean two of every kind of small dog. Abraham Lincoln (Timothy Simons) keeps smacking his head into chandeliers and doorways because he’s freakishly tall. Who better than Johnny Knoxville to play Rasputin, who can endure all manner of pain and come back for more?
Often, we laugh. Sometimes, we get a little impatient waiting for the next sketch.
Stay tuned for “History of the World, Part III,” which should be coming out on NuHulu+ExtraSpecial sometime around 2064.
