"First it was a movie, then it was a Broadway musical. Now it's a Broadway musical movie... the next thing will probably be claymation."

At least producer, composer, writer and director Mel Brooks is being honest about the big screen transfer of the stage production to the big screen.

Featuring original choreographer Susan Stroman in her directorial debut and Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick from the Broadway stage show, there's no real depaturture from form in this feature outing.

Even Gary Beach (as Hitler) and Roger Bart (as a supercamp assistant) are drafted in from the Tony Award-winning success to the celluloid take on the thirty-odd year old movie.

In fact, the only departure from the tried-and-tested is Will Ferrell as latent Nazi scriptwriter Franz Liebkind and Uma Thurman as Ulla, the Swedish sex siren on full volume.

The fact that it works so well is a tribute to Brooks' solid gold, fashion-defying alchemy of appalling taste, provocative humour and showstopping tunes. Think Jerry Springer: The Opera put on purely for financial gain.

Lane delivers a pretty much unimprovable performance as the shifty producer who realises that a flop - especially one featuring strutting Nazis and goose-stepping chorus girls - could make more money than a hit show.

The ever-youthful Broderick gives a disappointingly one-dimensional show as the number-crunching accountant-turned-impresario but game outings from Thurman and Ferrell iron over such shortcomings.

High points include Lane's synchronised fan club of randy old ladies twirling their Zimmer frames in Central Park and the sublimely staged re-realisation of the the Nuremberg rallies as choreographed by Busby Berkeley.

It quite often betrays its stage show roots - particularly during segments of dialogue - and Stroman never really takes advantage of the cinematic possibilities of the big screen.

Yet the source material is so rich and the stage play on which it is based such a mercurial brew of zippy one-liners and melodic showstoppers that it can't really fail.

If you can't make the theatre production, then this lavishly glossy effort is a worthy second best.

Tim Evans