Several Thousand (and 40) Years in the Making
Back in 1981, Mel Brooks made “The History of the World, Part I.” On Monday, after only 40 years, the sequel will finally arrive. “The History of the World, Part II” will premiere on Hulu, as part of a four-night event, with two segments each night.
The 96-year-old Brooks is involved with the production, though not intimately. He does the narration, serves as executive producer, and I believe was involved with some of the writing. But mainly, this is the work of Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes and Ike Barinholtz. I haven’t read the reviews, not wanting anything given away, but the headlines that have passed my glance have all been very positive.
And it’s an impressive cast, including Jack Black, Danny DeVito, David Duchovny, Josh Gad, Jake Johnson, Richard Kind, Johnny Knoxville, Jack McBrayer, Kumail Nanjiani, Emily Ratajkowski, Sam Richardson, Seth Rogen Sarah Silverman, J.B. Smoove, Taika Waititi and many more.
If you don't subscribe to Hulu, but want to watch, they have a 30-day free trial. Or you can sign up for only $8 a month with ads -- or $15 a month ad-free. (Last year, I signed up with the service because they had a special offer of a bizarrely low $2 month all year with ads. And I've found the ads fairly limited and not overly intrusive, especially for that price. And Hulu has had a long more good material than I expected.)
Here’s the trailer --
And in honor of the whole thing, I thought I’d post again the musical medley portion of when Brooks received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009. It’s very well-done, and the two people who seem to be enjoying it the most are Brooks (singing along with most of the songs) and – sitting next to him – Bruce Springsteen. What I most love is how they take one of Brooks’s songs about a character in the story and turn it around to be about Brooks himself – and you can see how Brooks (who had been laughing along the whole performance) suddenly becomes very moved, seeing his song become about him.
Though he might seem missing, rest assured that Carl Reiner was part of the evening – I believe he introduced the whole tribute. If you look closely you’ll see him back on stage during the finale. In fact, you can see him below to the left of Jack Black (on the far left in his Robin Hood cap).
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