The ensemble cast includes Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Bernadette Peters, and Sid Caesar, with cameos by Anne Bancroft, Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Marcel Marceau, and Paul Newman as themselves, and character cameos by Harry Ritz of the Ritz Brothers, Charlie Callas, and Henny Youngman.
He and his sidekicks, Marty Eggs and Dom Bell, want to make the first silent movie in 40 years, and Funn pitches the idea to the chief of Big Picture Studios.
The chief rejects the idea at first, but Funn convinces him that if he can get Hollywood's biggest stars to be in the film, it could save the studio from a takeover by New York conglomerate Engulf & Devour.
While visiting the ailing studio chief in the hospital, Funn phones mime artist Marcel Marceau, who responds in French with the only spoken word in the film: a resounding Non!
In the course of their search for stars, the trio have a number of brief misadventures, including a mix-up between a seeing-eye dog and an untrained look-alike, several (mostly unsuccessful) efforts by Eggs to approach various women, and a Coca-Cola vending machine that launches cans like grenades.
Engulf & Devour learn of the project, and try to sabotage it by sending voluptuous nightclub sensation Vilma Kaplan to seduce Funn.
But Kaplan has genuinely fallen for Funn, and refused Engulf & Devour's money; she helps Eggs and Bell find him and restore him to sobriety.
They are cornered by Engulf & Devour's thuggish executives, but use the Coke machine they encountered earlier to attack and subdue them with exploding cans.
The studio is saved, and Funn, Eggs, Bell, Kaplan and Chief celebrate, as an onscreen caption identifies the film as a "true story".
Mel Brooks enjoyed success with the release of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein in 1974, both being parodies of entire genres.
Prior to the release of Silent Movie, That's Entertainment!, a documentary about the golden age of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals, had been the most successful film for MGM in 1974.
[5] Cowriter Ron Clark was previously the producer of The Tim Conway Comedy Hour, while Rudy De Luca and Barry Levinson were writers for The Carol Burnett Show.
[5] Henry Jenkins points out that for Brooks, the decision to make a silent comedy represents an allusion to an earlier era of his career.
Executives cannot tell good film footage apart from bad, while the "Current Studio Chief" is one box-office bomb away from losing his position.
Fortunately for the audience, the entire movie is not an exercise in silence, as the orchestra strikes up when the 20th Century-Fox logo appears on a billboard, just before the main title.
For instance, a scene showing the New York City skyline begins with the song, "San Francisco", only to have it come to a sudden stop, as the musicians realize they're playing the wrong music.
Writer Robert Alan Crick, author of The Big Screen Comedies of Mel Brooks (2002), points out that the part could have easily been played by any well-known actress of the 1970s, with no apparent difference.
Several chase scenes are sure laugh-getters, and Harry Ritz, Charlie Callas, Henry Youngman, and the late Liam Dunn are standouts in a long array of amusing bit players.
[10] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four, and wrote that it offered "a number of laughs", and felt that the unbilled cameos were as "refreshing as they are brief".
Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film can be enjoyed as "a virtually uninterrupted series of smiles", but "doesn't contain a single moment that ever seriously threatens to split the sides".
The critical consensus reads: "Stylistically audacious and infectiously nostalgic for the dawn of cinema, Silent Movie is another comedic triumph for Mel Brooks... now shush.