Superb. .... I’ll also go to the mat for “Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!” It has a seamless flow and structure, toggling back and forth from Apatow’s conversations with Brooks to a wealth of secondary interviews, archive interviews, and clips, all in the service of telling a story, rather than massaging any egos (Apatow’s or Brooks’s).

The test for the picture, then, comes in whether it's possible to emerge from it with any new insight into the man himself and into why his work resonates as much as it does. And the filmmakers find plenty of material on both fronts.

After almost four hours, they will at least have a better sense of him. Apatow etches an indelible portrait that reveals what makes Mel Brooks run.

The commentary by dozens of admirers and career-highlight TV and movie snippets are great of course, nostalgic but purposeful, meaningful in the context of Brooks’ life and influence on showbiz. But Apatow digs just deep enough to show that the guy is a true, honest-to-gosh restless artist at heart.

Many of the stories are well known, as are many of the clips (“May the Schwartz be with you!”), though the editing turns the well-trod into an asset.

An exhaustive look at Brooks’s life and art. As such, it’s easy to find yourself giggling uncontrollably over clips from “The Producers” (1967) or “Blazing Saddles” (1974). That alone is a pleasure. Still, this is more than just a history of how these cinematic classics came to be. It is also about Brooks’s longevity and the loneliness of being one of the last of a generation.

The wide scope and weight of history makes this feel more in the vein of Apatow and Bonfiglio’s George Carlin doc than the former’s solo effort on Garry Shandling. Which isn’t to suggest that this isn’t an intimate sketch. It very much is.