Mel Brooks is the funniest. That we all agree on. There is no need to debate it. All of us who try to make comedy know we will never be the best. Mel wins. What we can debate is which is the best Mel Brooks movie. Yes, this is a subjective question. If you choose Blazing Saddles or The Producers or High Anxiety, I can’t prove you wrong, but allow me to make the case for Young Frankenstein. Young Frankenstein is perfect. It’s the comedy equivalent of Sgt. Pepper or The Great Gatsby or the 1986 New York Mets. The pace and joke compression are off the charts. The laughs are huge. The jokes land like the punches of a prize fighter in furious volleys from all different angles. The big ones landing when you least expect them. What modern comedy doesn’t owe a debt of gratitude to Young Frankenstein? The physical comedy is both precise and insane. The genre parody is spot-on and meticulously detailed. There have been a million spoof movies since, but none of them even comes close. You don’t need to know a thing about Frankenstein to love this movie. Plus, Marty Feldman’s looks to camera are so well-timed and iconic, he’s basically inventing The Office in 1974 … Another thing to keep in mind: Mel Brooks made Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles in the same year. Has a director ever had a better year than Mel Brooks in 1974? Victor Fleming made Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz in 1939, but Gone with the Wind isn’t funny at all. Mel wins again. A few years ago, I went to see Young Frankenstein at a revival house, and it got the loudest, most sustained laughs I have ever heard in a theater. I was jealous, but then I realized I will never fight as well as Ali, I will never paint as beautifully as Picasso, and I will never be as funny as Mel Brooks. But even if you’re only a third as funny as Mel, that still will make for a comfortable living.

Judd Apatow, in Mel Brooks (with Rebecca Keegan), Young Frankenstein: The Story of the Making of the Film, Black Dog & Leventhal, New York 2016